A Mother's Musings
by Smoltenica
Summary: Post TLB, spoilers for all books. Nothing and nobody was the same after the train incident in 1949. This is a character study centred upon Eustace's snobby, forward-thinking mother, Alberta Scrubb, exploring the nature of motherhood, sisterhood, and the impact of grief. Rewrite of an old fic. Now, at last, complete!
1. grimy scraps of withered leaves

Alberta Scrubb folded the magazine with an impatient sigh.

She was not entirely certain why she felt so ill at ease today, but the beige sitting room walls seemed almost to loom at her, threatening to envelop her in their paleness.

Perhaps that was just it- their paleness. Rarely had she ever left the sitting room walls without a painting; as a journalist she was generally well aware of the latest modern masterpieces, and was quick to inform Harold about which copies they should look into. Recently, however, she had found herself somewhat dissatisfied with the upcoming artists. Ellsworth Kelly, for example, was clearly talented, and his mastery of form and the way in which he challenged traditional concepts of art was intellectually marvellous, but when she had opened the latest Whitney Annual she had found herself feeling curiously empty.

Harold would know what to do, she would ask him when he came home. He was at a discussion forum at the London School of Economics regarding Hayek's shocking essay on "The Intellectuals and Socialism". It had caused quite a stir in the United States earlier in the spring, and had rankled not only herself and Harold, but several of Harold's associates. Saying that their Keynesian consensus was equivalent to a serfdom!- and painting intellectuals as being unfairly elevated for holding "progressive political views"! It was despicable, really. To an extent, Alberta wasn't entirely certain why there needed to be a debate about it.

Then again, perhaps there were other sides to the argument that she was unaware of. When Harold came home, he would explain everything. He was so wonderful at explaining things, Harold. It was a trait he had passed to their son, for which Alberta was exceptionally grateful.

_See, Alberta? _she heard his youthful voice say, so filled with confidence and authority. Only a child, but he possessed a level of _statesmanship _as he had pointed at his insect collection. _This is the chi- _she remembered how he had screwed his eyes up momentarily- _chitinous exoskeleton._ _And since it's in three parts, there's the head, the thorax- and that's actually the abdomen! _How eagerly he had poked and pointed, and how proud she had been of him, her knowledgeable son.

But even as she pride rose, a dark cloud rolled across and the light fluttered and faded.

How many years had it been since Eustace Clarence had shown her his insect collections? How many years had it been since the days when she never had to tell him to take his hands out of his pockets, or to stop leaning against door frames?

_Eustace Clarence. _

Why, oh why was he staying with the Pevensies? They were so common! Her brother had given Helen far too much sway with the children. Eustace was so much more than they were, and yet he was spending so much time with them! And the outcome! Slouched shoulders, hands in pockets, stories of adventures. Adventures! She and Harold had tried so very hard to teach Eustace Clarence how to be sensible, she had even been delighted when he had taken his interest in insects.

"_You'll be a scientist yet, my son," _she had said, and how he had beamed.

But that interest had died, long ago, had died from those months when she, in her charity, had taken Lucy and Edmund Pevensie into her home. And instead of hearing about wings, or the lengths of insects legs as proportionate to their bodies, she had been gifted by tales of a place called 'Narnia'. A creature- lion, tiger?- named 'Aslan'. Comments, stories, far too many mentions of that wretched Jill Pole!

There was nothing special in the girl. Even her name spoke volumes of her plainness. Eustace Clarence could do _so _much better than her!

"_It's just a passing phase yet," _Harold had told her, smiling. _"Don't worry, he'll grow up. I did- and then I found you." _

But to find, one would have to look first, she thought, and she knew that the Pevensies would not encourage her son to look further.

"_Eustace's friend, Jill, she was marvellous, Aunt Alberta," _she heard Edmund say on one of his visits, far too cheerfully, _"When she heard that Eustace and I were at-" _

Eustace and I.

They wouldn't even use his full name.

Not that she held anything against her nieces and nephews, not _really. _Peter was intelligent, and Edmund was reasonably gifted. She remembered the days when she had thought Edmund had showed a glimmer of the talent of her own Eustace Clarence- how long ago those days were, before that time of darkness and confusion and hatred. War changed everything.

As for the girls, Susan was simply far too flighty, and Lucy was so terribly immature. And then there was Jill Pole!

But then, she thought of Eustace Clarence once more, and she felt that _glow _rise in her heart.

_He must feel it, too, _she thought, _my son- always my son. _

And he would grow up, she was sure of it. Her pride and her joy, even through all those times of disappointment- he would stand up straight, and he would became a man as wonderful and assured as his father. This thing with the Pevensies- he was only young, after all.

Besides, Harold assured her that Jill Pole would fade away as the months passed and grew grey with age.

It was just as Alberta had settled into the lounge that the doorbell rang

* * *

><p><em>AN: Since Alberta is so progressive, it always struck me that she would be the sort to actively seek a job. I've based her character on Mary Heaton Vorse, an active voice for pacifism, socialism and women's suffrage. Ok, so MHV was an American, but I can totally see Alberta appreciating the progressiveness of American women, though she might disdain their culture as being vaguely plebian. _

_The Whitney Annual is a well established American art journal. _

_Lastly, a short explanation: I first wrote this fic when I was in yr 8. Looking back, I am dissatisfied with it, as I feel I did not understand Alberta's character enough to really explore issues of motherly grief, or the confusion and irritation of a non-Christian parent who loves but cannot fully understand their Christian child. I'm not saying that I understand these issues fully at this point, but through God's grace, I believe I understand them better. Anyhow, this storyline deserves better than my old, first version. _

_To all you beautiful reviewers from the first version, I saved a copy of your precious reviews. The time and care you put into providing such comments have been invaluable to my writing. _

_That said, new reviews would be lovely, as silver dragees on a cake. Just sayin' ;) _


	2. certain certainties

Alberta made a quick mental checklist of possible callers at this time of the day. Victor might have returned from his weekend away in the country with Helen, but she could not fathom why he would come calling today. Unless Eustace Clarence had somehow been caught up in something- unpleasant?

But no, not her Eustace Clarence, he was a reasonable boy for all his faults. _(He was her son.) _

So she rose, still mystified, as the doorbell rang again, and fought the childish urge to peer through the peephole. Instead, she grasped the handle (lovely cool brass), and pulled the door open.

Before her stood a uniformed constable, aluminium report case in one hand.

_Constable, _she thought, wondering whether this was some strange alternate universe. _A Constable. _

Quickly she wondered whether she should speak.

_It wasn't Eustace Clarence, _she wanted to say, immediately followed by the thought, _Harold would never have done anything, it was his colleagues, the paper was always going to be controversial!  
><em>

But before she could speak, the constable cleared his throat. He was young, she thought, almost a boy- not much older than her brother's son, Peter. And he looked nervous. She could detect a slight hunch in his shoulders and fought the urge to tell him to stand up straighter.

"Are you Mrs Alberta Scrubb, wife of Mr Harold Scrubb and mother of Eustace Clarence Scrubb?" the constable asked, and Alberta detected a strain of unwillingness in his voice. He looked down at the report in his hands and shuffled his left toe perceptibly. "And are you the sister of Professor Victor Andrew Pevensie?"

Something inexplicable gripped at Alberta, and she felt as though she had been plastered to a cardboard backing with no space to move.

"Yes," she said weakly and wondered that the voice was hers. "Do- do please come in."

He half shuffled inside, peering around the hallway.

_And do mind your own business, _she thought snappishly.

"Come through," she said instead, her marionette hand gesturing at the lounge in the sitting room. "Please, take a seat."

The constable visibly swallowed.

"Mrs Scrubb, Ma'am," he said, a slight tremor in his voice. "I think it might be best if you took a seat."

_I think it might be best if you took a seat._

Alberta steeled her back.

"I think I would prefer to stand," she snapped, unsure of whether she felt more petulant or afraid. "Please, Constable-"

"Watson," he said, clearing his throat. "Constable Watson, Mrs Scrubb. And- that-"

"And please say what you wish to say," she finished curtly.

He looked as though someone had stuck a pin through his chest.

"I'm afraid I have some terrible news to tell you," he said somewhat thickly, eyes trained upon the left cornice above the bay window.

Alberta had a wild, inane flash of thankfulness that she had cleaned the cornices the other day.

"There- there's been a train accident with the British Railways. A train- derailed, it must have been taking a corner too quickly. Your son, Eustace Clarence Scrubb, was involved in the accident and he sustained serious injuries. He was taken to St Bartholomew's Hospital for treatment, but he died from his injuries almost immediately upon arrival."

_Train accident. Eustace Clarence Scrubb. St Bartholomew's. Died from his injuries. Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Died from his injuries. Died from his injuries._

"I'm sorry," said Alberta's voice, from Alberta's lips. The sound echoed in her head like a fork that had been dropped in the sink. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

_Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Train accident. Died from his injuries. Died. Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Died. Died. _

The constable looked stricken.

"Mrs Srubb," he said, a crack creeping into his voice. "I'm afraid there's more."

_More? _

Alberta fought a wild urge to laugh.

"Your- your brother, Professor Victor Andrew Pevensie- he was on the train as well."

_Victor? _

But it couldn't be.

"_Victor, what it is it this time?" _

A broad grin, and her irreverent brother, doffing his hat with a hint of a wink.

"_Look, I know it's not an ideal time, and I don't know when I'm going to be called up for this war, but Bertha, you should have a read of this! See what Old Possum turned out this month!" _

"_Old Possum's Practical Book of Cats? Victor, what is going wrong with your current research?" _

"But Victor was coming back from the country," she said stupidly. "He and Helen were returning from Herefordshire. He always drives. There _must _be a mistake, Constable Watson, there must be a mistake!"

_Yes, a mistake, and Eustace Clarence is fine, there has been no train accident, and he is not injured, he never went to St Bartholomew's. Victor is driving home from Herefordshire with Helen, and he will call tonight with some inane tale that Harold and I will laugh over. It has all been a mistake. _

"Ma'am," said Constable Watson, and the tremor in his voice made her look at him. He was looking at her, too, and she _felt_ his dark eyes coated with pity and trepidation. "Your brother and your son are currently at the mortuary in St Bartholomew's Hospital. You may go and identify them."

_Identify. _

"And what if I don't wish to?" she said brusquely.

"Ma'am," Constable Watson said gently, "please, will you go and identify them? You may wait for your husband to return home, but please, come. Your niece, Susan Pevensie, is out of the country, and we need you to-"

_We need you to. _

Alberta did sit, then, very abruptly.

"There is more," she said flatly.

"I'm sorry," said Constable Watson, and he sounded it. "Your husband's wife, Helen, along with your nephews, Peter and Edmund Pevensie and your niece, Lucy Pevensie, were also involved in the train crash. They are currently lying in the mortuary at St Bartholomew's."

_Helen, _she thought, and saw the bubbly, friendly (if somewhat vapid) woman her brother had met while walking through Putney.

"_Victor, why did you choose her? You could have had Petulia." _

"_But Alberta, Petulia is not Helen." _

_Peter, _she thought, and she saw him with his earnest smile, his hands shoved ungracefully into his pockets. _Edmund. _Edmund, who had once almost been her son's equal. _Lucy. _An immature girl, but her niece, and only just finished her schooling education. She had been about to enter university.

And Eustace Clarence.

_Eustace Clarence. _

"Please go," she murmured, grasping at the lounge armrest. "Please leave me."

"Ma'am-"

"Go!" she cried, and threw the nearest vase across the room. It shattered, a disappointingly quiet sound.

_And I will have to clean up the splinters, _she thought.

There were splinters behind her eyes, too. Or were those tears? She wasn't sure.

_I will speak with Harold, and we will reason what it is. _

_Harold. _

Harold did not know.

Quickly, she jerked her head up. Constable Watson had stood and was leaving the room.

"Wait!" she called, and he turned around.

_You have no right to look anguished, _she thought, wondering why she was not angry or irritated in the slightest. _You have not been told that your son, your brother, his wife and three of his children are lying in a mortuary. You have not been told to identify your family, you have not-_

"You haven't- has anyone told my husband?" she asked, piteously.

Constable Watson cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am," he said, "there were a lot of people involved in this accident, and our protocol is to call upon the home of relatives. Your husband is-"

"At the London School of Economics."

He nodded.

"I will try to see if he can be contacted," he said, and Alberta nodded mutely. "Goodbye, Mrs Scrubb. I- I'm very sorry for your loss."

_I'm very sorry for your loss. _

Alberta waited until she heard the door close before she closed her eyes.

_Her marionette eyes, and her marionette hand that came to rest on her stuffed, cold forehead. _

The tears did not come.


	3. on broken blinds and chimney pots

Constable Watson was true to his word.

At ten past two that the afternoon, Harold came through the door. From his slow gait, from the way he took his hat off, from the tiredness in his eyes, Alberta knew. He raised his eyes to look at her, and in them she read the grief, the pain.

"You were right," he said, his voice a blessed relief in the roaring silence. "I shouldn't have let him go."

_No, you shouldn't._

The words were almost on Alberta's lips when they turned to ash and fell to the carpet (she still needed to clean the shards from the vase).

"He was with his cousins- my nephews, my niece," she told him instead, dully. "It wasn't your fault."

But it wasn't theirs, either, and they, too, lay in a cold mortuary, awaiting identification.

_It was the train._

Alberta tried to summon up her anger, but it had deserted her, slipped like a thread through a broken needle head.

It was thirteen past two when she met Harold's eyes again, still weary, still sad. (_But still strong_.)

_I must be strong, too._

"I suppose we should head to St Bartholomew's," she said presently. In some far distant chamber of her mind something laughed. How inane, how ridiculous, it sounded almost as if she were talking to Cynthia. _"I suppose we should purchase some flour, then"_ or, "_I suppose we should hand in our articles. Are you heading past the office?" _

Harold nodded slowly, as though the very motion gave him pain.

"Come," he said, holding the door open. "I'll drive."

As opposed to taking the train.

Alberta closed the door, so cool to touch, and closed her eyes.

_Eustace Clarence_, she thought, as a small blue-eyed child walked smartly through the swimming darkness. He looked at her, puffed out his chest, held up a butterfly, pinned to a cardboard backing. Then the darkness rippled, and he was fourteen, standing beside the sitting room copy of _Guernica_, shoulders straight, eyes forlorn. _Eustace Clarence_. Then she saw him again, sixteen years old and satchel in hand, walking towards the Pevensies, waiting by the pavement. He gave a smart wave and faded away into the inky black, washed behind a wall as realistic as a Dali.

The car pulled up outside St Bartholomew's.

-  
>Inside the walls and floor were bare, lit by a murky green light.<p>

_We have lingered beneath the chambers of the sea._

Harold had read that poem to her, she recalled, and it had been on a warm summer's day, the rare sun edging cautiously around the low-lying clouds. It had always been special to her, and she had encouraged Eustace Clarence to read it.

He might have read it, and even liked it, she thought blankly, had he not discovered George MacDonald.

_I write not for children but for the childlike- _wasn't that how the man's ridiculous statement went? Eustace Clarence had quoted it at her several times until she had lost her temper at him. In this moment, she could hear Eustace Clarence saying it, even now; that strange little inflection at the word 'childlike', the way he would glance at her, almost furtively. How she had hated that furtive look.

_He will not give me that look anymore._

But of course he would, that was absurd. Eustace Clarence could not simply disappear just like that. He would come back home and she would realise that he had not folded his bed sheets properly and she would berate him, and then he would come to dinner. They might even discuss art afterwards. She would like that, when she found another painting for the sitting room wall.

_Rothko's swell._

Beside her, Harold took her hand in his. His grip was firm, familiar, and she pressed back, glad to have his solid flesh as a (reminder).

A young, bright-eyed man with dull blonde hair came to meet them.

"Mrs Alberta Scrubb and Mr Harold Scrubb?" he said, checking the clipboard. He had the mildest hint of a Cockney accent.

Harold murmured an assent.

"I'm Dr Louis Brealey. It's nice to meet you," he beamed, sticking out a hand. "I work here," he added as an afterthought, as though Alberta and Harold had not yet made the connection.

Neither Alberta nor Harold took his hand. Dr Louis Brealey looked at them dubiously, and at his proffered hand, before retracting it to wipe against his doctor's coat.

"Er, well, through here," he said awkwardly, gesturing to a dark blue door with a glass panel, patterned as with metal netting. As she passed through the door, Alberta glanced at the man who was clearly trying to smile. She wished he would stop trying.

Unlike the corridor before, this room was blindingly bright, and painfully white. It made Alberta feel strangely like she was at home in her sitting room. Waiting for Constable Watson. No, not waiting; he had come. And then he had said-

"Eustace Clarence!"

She felt, rather than heard, Harold's intake of breath.

Her first thought was, _he is so white_.

A thousand thoughts pricked her mind: he must rest, she would make him soup. He needed a shower, his face was so dirty and brown-

Brown with dried blood.

She drew her hand back from his cheek. Brown, all she could see was brown- a dirty, rusty brown that would once have been red.

_Rothko_, she thought wildly, _one of Rothko's abstracts_.

But it had been her son's face that she had been looking at, it had been Eustace Clarence and his eyes were so wide, and his skin was so pale, and all she could see was brown, a cloudy brown that burnt at her eyelids and stung at her cheeks.

_Harold_, she wanted to say, but it hurt to speak and her lips were heavy. _Harold_!

"Yes," she heard Harold say distantly, "that is our son."

Inside her stomach stirred like a spoon.

"Lovely!" Louis Brealey piped up.

Alberta's insides coiled, reared, and she drew herself up fiercely. The man looked startled, as if he was facing a sea serpent, or one of those ridiculous creatures Eustace Clarence had insisted upon babbling about not long after Lucy and Edmund had first stayed in Hampstead.

_Lovely, _she thought, and something near her eyes burned as she continued to stare at the man. He was now turning a shade of red, but it was not like the rusty red on Eustace Clarence's pale, still skin, not like that rusty wretched red (_a splash ripping apart a blank, stretched canvas_).

"Oh, well, not- lovely," the man amended, far too late, "I just mean- I'm glad- glad it's not the wrong body. We had a muddle up just a few weeks ago with this lady, Irene Pulver- honestly thought it was her, but her face was so smashed in, we needed to-"

"Don't try to make conversation," she snapped as Harold cut in at the same time, saying,

"Mr Brealey, at least try to be a little less insensitive."

Louis Brealey gulped.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Such empty words. _I'm sorry. _And Eustace Clarence still lay before her, though his body was wavering in the light.

"I believe my brother is also here," she said, and wondered that her voice was so strong, so clear. "I should- I should like to see him."

"Er, yes," Louis Brealey said, hurrying to the other side of the room. "We've identified Professor Victor Andrew Pevensie and his wife Mrs Helen-"

_Victor_, Alberta thought, Louis Brealey's words fading to an inexorably unforgiving pulse in her brain.

There was no rusty red on his face, only that same paleness that made her think of the time he had broken his arm as a child. How afraid she'd been that he'd never be able to use his arm again; but he'd only looked at it and shrugged.

_Don't worry, Bertha, it'll be ok._

His shrug, that careless shrug, how she knew that shrug. It was just so _Victor, _to brush off lightly things that any rational person would fret about. She had seen his sons, particularly Peter, give that very same shrug. It had been one of the few traits Eustace Clarence had picked up from his cousins that she had been loath to berate him for.

But there, why think of that? He wasn't shrugging now.

_He will never shrug again._

She clapped her hand to her mouth and turned away. Harold moved, instinctively, touched her shoulder gently, almost hesitantly.

"I can't do this," she whispered, and fear like a blank canvas rippled through her stomach as she realised the truth in her words. "Harold, I-"

He pressed a brief kiss to her forehead.

"It- Alberta- I'll do it," he said, and she heard the cracks in his voice, heard his own fear.

Had Harold always been braver than she had? Perhaps, but she had never seen it.

"Thank you," she breathed, her eyes shut. Around her, the world spun (_almost like that time Victor had taken her to the park and then grabbed her hand, and they had spun, back when they were children_)- only it felt that somehow the ground had fallen through, and she was suspended _(marionette Bertha, raise your hand to your eyes and blink, and see the drop fall, fall, fall)._

"How long can you keep the bodies?" she heard her voice say, breaking through the growing din.

Louis Brealey's voice was hesitant. "Mrs Scrubb, it's only a matter of days, we have to-"

"Please keep them as long as you can," she said curtly. "My niece is travelling back from America. Open casket funerals are distasteful, and I am sure she will want to see her family. Please keep their bodies as long as is possible."

"Yes, Ma'am!" said Louis Brealey, looking half terrified as he scuttled through the door.

When he had disappeared, she collapsed against Harold. He caught her and held her against his chest (_like a broken doll_).

"I'm here, Alberta," he whispered, "I'm here."

And she pressed her face against his collar and felt the material, warm and wet against her cheeks.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Although my father, being a doctor, has signed off autopsies of bodies in mortuaries, I have never been inside a mortuary and so cannot vouch for the realism or arealism of this chapter. All I can say is that I hope it is as emotionally harrowing to read as it was to write, and I ask that those of you who have read this chapter please leave a review. Thanks muchly._


	4. in a thousand furnished rooms

It was a church service.

_I don't want it,_ had been her first thought when Harold suggested it.

_Eustace Clarence would have wanted it_, he had said, and she was glad she had not opened her mouth to voice her petulant thoughts. _And your brother, and Helen- hell, even the kids, Alberta. They would have wanted it._

And so they sat within a dark and dingy church behind a brick wall, a gharish painted roof that whispered oppressively of that horrid war and nights of blackout, and they listened to words- words! Words designed to bring comfort and joy, perhaps, but they were only words.

Glancing down the pew, she saw her niece, the beautiful Susan Pevensie, her dark eyes shuttered behind long lashes, her hair pulled back in an elegant twist. Susan Pevensie, who had perhaps lost more than Alberta- mother and father, and three siblings, in one fell swoop (_but not her son_, she thought, achingly, _not her only child_).

_Not my flesh, but partly my blood_, she thought, and felt something almost imperceptible pulse, and die away. Then the thought fluttered away from her mind before she could grasp hold of it.

It was good that Susan could be here, at any rate. She was glad that Susan had made the funeral. She had almost missed seeing her family's faces again, had almost screamed her way into the mortuary at St Bartholomew's before they were placed in the caskets.

But perhaps it would be better to not have seen their faces. So deathly pale, so unnaturally still. _And tinged with a dirty, rusty brown_.

Rusty brown, blood like soil.

_Rocky soil, your heart is rocky soil._

Where had that thought come from?

She glanced around wildly, but no one had spoken to her. She looked down to her niece once more.

Susan Pevensie did not look comforted, either. Her cheeks were pinched, and the powder sat in obvious contrast to the paleness of her face. And her hands; Alberta watched her fingers as they clutched almost too tightly at the order of service.

_Words_, she thought, _words_.

_Now come, Alberta_, she heard her mother say, and suddenly she was eight years old again, in a stiffly starched dress. They were waiting in that long line to eat the thin, dry wafer and everyone was oh so serious. _Don't fidget, you're in a church!_

B_ut Mummy- what are they playing?_

An impatient sigh of disappointment. _Alberta, it is 'Abide with Me', with the setting by Monk- surely you must know it by now!_

_I don't like it._

_Alberta!_

"Alberta?" she turned her head dully to the side. It felt so heavy upon her neck. Harold was staring at her, and she could feel his tenderness, his concern.

_If only it could touch me._

He reached out a hand to clasp hers. His grip was warm, firm, familiar; as though drowning she grasped at his fingers and swallowed, shuddering.

The organ began playing- a loud, booming instrument. Alberta didn't care much for the sound, it was nasal and loud and oh, it hurt, it hurt.

_Eustace Clarence is lying beneath those pipes,_ she thought,_ Eustace Clarence is in that walnut box, with a bible and a candle and puddle, where the celebrant sprinkled the water. Eustace Clarence is lying there, with his shoulders squared, as I always told him to square them, and he is wearing the suit Harold bought him for Christmas._

Was that grief or pain pulling at her heart? Or, worse, was it her imagination? There were times she felt she must be a heartless woman, a horrible mother.

But now they were singing, and she glanced down at the pewsheet Harold was holding out for her.

_"I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;_  
><em>Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness;<em>  
><em>Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?<em>" she whispered, and all the while the bile grew in her throat.

_Where is death's sting? It's here!_ she wanted to scream, pointing at her heart. _Where is grave's victory? It's lying there, with my son's body, with my brother's body, with his wife's body, with three of their children, my niece and nephews! There is its victory, can't you see?_

But tears clouded her vision, and when she opened her mouth, only a feeble croak that might once have been a sob escaped.

_Where is your just God now, Eustace Clarence?_ a distant part of her mind whispered. _Where is your God?_

And then he was standing there in front of her, hands in his pockets- how she had hated Peter Pevensie for contaminating her son with that trait!- face strangely solemn, like a strange mirror staring back at her.

_"But I have to believe in God, Alberta," _she heard him say, so seriously,_ "or I can't make any sense of suffering, or- or death."_

It was the week after the bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she remembered, the week after that horrid and strange breakfast where Eustace Clarence had tried to defend war in spite of all its abominations. He had stopped at that breakfast, but the next week he had taken the conversation up again, and he had not stopped but continued talking, almost rapidly, as though afraid she would disappear into the wall and harden into stone.

_"You see- if there is no God, then death is- normal. Meaningless. It's just- well, we're born to die. But because of God, death- death, it's got meaning. It's punishment. It's not- not normal, not the way things are meant to be. But because of God, again- because of Jesus- it doesn't have to be the end. There's a way out, a way to life- and that way's found in the Lord Jesus. Alberta, I wish you understood." Or maybe he had said, "I wish you knew."_

Words, empty, meaningless words- and yet something in Alberta ached with (longing?)- she wasn't sure. She wished she remembered Eustace Clarence's words.

"It's our time to speak," Harold murmured in her ear, his hand warm against the small of her back.

_Please don't move your hand,_ she thought,_ I think I'll fall, I don't know how I'll stand._

But somehow her legs remembered how to stand, and she was walking up to the pulpit, walking beside the covered coffins.

Trembling, she looked at the paper in her hands.

Words. Empty words.

Closing her eyes, she remembered holding Eustace Clarence, as a baby, watched him walk so proudly and confidently. She remembered that indefinite pulse, that glow of an invisible bond, so intangible it weighed on her heart till the pride almost hurt, it was so vivid. She remembered, and it glowed more brightly yet, almost as if-

Opening her eyes, she gripped the sides of the lectern.

"Eustace Clarence was my son," she said, and then her voice broke as her vision wavered, and the memories came flooding in.

* * *

><p><em>AN: No one has yet picked it up, or if they have they have been rather quiet, but if anyone did get the 'Sherlock' reference in the previous chapter then you should know that I am actually a huge fan of Molly Hooper.  
><em>

_Only two months ago I was assistant organist at a funeral at large high Anglican church in Sydney, and in the midst of it all I was struck by the thought, "This is what the Pevensies' funeral would have looked like". I guess you could extrapolate that this is the chapter I've been aiming to write for a while. I hope that the writing lives up to its backstory and 'raison d'être'!_


	5. damp gust bringing rain

It was over now. _(Over.) _

Now the curtain had dropped, she had taken leave of the pulpit (and, thankfully, of that dingy church). Some absurd post-performance celebration typically known as a 'wake' was taking place.

_So wrong, _she thought, looking at the people clutching cups and slices. _This is so wrong._

Ostensibly, she was celebrating the lives of her son, her brother, her sister-in-law, her nephews and one of her nieces. Celebrating! How could tea and cake ever change the irrevocable fact that Eustace Clarence, that Victor, that his wife and three of his children _(and thirty-two others, cold statistic)_ were dead!

"I remember his first Ash Wednesday service," she heard an unfamiliar voice say from somewhere to her right. "He didn't come up to have the mark of the cross on his forehead, but he came up during Eucharist- and afterwards, he took me aside for a serious discussion because he wasn't sure he had made the right choice. Such a wonderful, if solemn boy."

_That's not my son, _she thought dimly, and she felt the lump stir in the current of her throat. _I didn't raise him to go to church or to have Eucharist or to have ash crosses on his forehead. Solemn! - this was your doing, it was that dark church that did that to him! My Eustace Clarence was always self-assured! My Eustace Clarence!_

But the words did not come, because she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, the waiting tears would pounce past the words, the same tears that had accosted her at the alien pulpit.

"I will be praying for you during this time," the unfamiliar voice said, and it was all she could do to prevent herself from snapping back, "_I don't need your prayers!" _

_Harold, _she thought, _where are you, Harold? _

And as much as she hated herself for her weakness (had she not been the most ardent supporter of WSPU, until Emmeline Pankhurst had thrown her support behind the Great War?)- as much as she hated that she could not stand and stay sane alone, she knew that she needed him, _needed _him by her side. He was all she had left in this time, now that Eustace Clarence-

Her hands trembled.

"Here," she heard Harold say, and suddenly he was behind her, a warm, solid presence _(reminder). _She felt him push a mug of tea into her clammy hands. "I'm- I'm here, Alberta."

Dimly, she felt him press a brief kiss on her forehead.

It was as if one of Eustace Clarence's little nets from all those years ago had broken, and butterfly and moth were madly fluttering in every direction. A tiny gesture- how many times had she seen Victor kiss Helen, on the forehead, on the cheek, on the lips?- yet how many years had it been since she and Harold had been so- so- publicly (_even privately_) affectionate?

Perhaps she had herself to blame for that. But in those awful hours since Constable Watson had walked into her door and forever ruined her life, she had lost count of the things for which she ought to blame herself.

Ought she have stopped Eustace Clarence fraternising with his cousins? - but they were his cousins. (And now, except for Susan, they were dead.) Ought she have stopped him from going to their place for that weekend? - but Harold had sanctioned it before she had even heard of the invitation, and he had explained it so rationally that she had, in the end, agreed with him. (And they were Victor's children.) No- she had done everything she could, she had been the best parent that she could have been.

And her son lay dead.

She had tried, at first, to blame Harold. He had been too lax with Eustace Clarence, had let him run around with that wretched Pole girl (but she, too, was dead)- had let him spend time with his cousins. He had allowed Eustace Clarence to do things that she, Alberta Scrubb, would not have allowed him to do. Though she had argued, and though she'd thought she might win the argument- and sometimes in all rights, had won- somehow, his decisions prevailed.

Yet she couldn't bring it in herself to blame Harold- not anymore than she could or couldn't blame herself.

"It's all right," she whispered instead, closing her eyes to inhale the familiarity of his ironed collar. "Thank you. It's all right."

It wasn't all right. It never could be all right. But what else had she to say? She didn't have the words.

It made her feel inadequate as a journalist, not to have the words. How many reports had she written centring upon death? But death (how she hated the finality of that word!)- death was something she could not have understood until now. Even when her parents had passed away, it had not felt like this, this raw pain like a cord yanked from its socket, strains still curling and coiling, drifting aimlessly in the uncaring wind.

Harold stayed there a moment more, and she closed her eyes again as she pressed herself against his shirt, feeling his warmth, breathing in his distinctively Harold smell. They stayed together a moment, and in that moment it was as if the people had come and gone, and the yellow smog of London halted against a single frame.

When she opened her eyes, Harold had left, but she did not feel quite so empty.

"I can only imagine how difficult it must be for you," came a warm, if tremulous, voice from her left.

Alberta turned her head, marvelling at how strangely difficult the simple action felt. As she blinked, the hazy, watery quality to her vision grew gradually sharper, clearer, and eventually she found herself staring at a woman she had never before met.

She was a plain woman.

That much was evident from the unfashionable cut of her coat to the distinct lines on her gloves, where the woman had clearly stitched at the worn cotton. It was further evident from the plainness of her face, the oh-so common application of her make-up), from the soft northern lilt to her accent. Even her hair hinted at untameable curls that once had been a shade of ginger but now resembled the scourers Alberta used to clean her kitchen.

Yet there was something in her voice, something in her eyes, and it made Alberta halt. It was imperceptibly soft, perhaps it was simply imperceptible. But it reminded her (ever so slightly) of that quiet, pulsing thread she felt- had felt- with Eustace Clarence.

The woman smiled, but there was a gentle pain tinging her smile, and something in it soothed Alberta.

"I'm Millicent MacPherson," the woman said, holding out a hand, and Alberta found that she did not mind the aging, fraying gloves. "My husband, Samuel, is one of the wardens here. You must be Mrs Scrubb."

MacPherson. So that explained the mildly northern lilt.

"Yes, I'm Alberta," she murmured.

Millicent nodded. "Even before you spoke at the pulpit, I thought it must be so." She touched her womb briefly, gently. "It is an unspeakable grief to lose your child. And your brother. But your child, especially." She took a short, shuddering breath and chewed her lower lip hesitantly. "But even so- you were blessed, Mrs Scrubb."

Alberta gaped at her indignantly. Blessed! Blessed!- a word that implied the existence of God, if there could be any god!

After a moment, Millicent looked at her sadly, tiredly. "You knew your son for years. You saw what a fine man he was becoming- _had _become. I- I knew my son for seven hours."

Seven _hours. _

Retorts burst immediately and flooded themselves upon Alberta's lips, clamouring like understudies fighting for an incapacitated lead's role.

Hours! That was not enough to claim motherhood. This Millicent MacPherson had not seen her son walk, had not heard him talk, had not seen him explain his collections of chitinous exoskeletons. She had not taught her son to speak, had not sent him to boarding college, had not worried and fretted over his future!

But even as those thoughts came, she remembered those first few hours- weak, aching and tired, with midwives bustling side to side. Harold, standing by her side- and a tiny, red faced child, squealing with cries too soft to be irksome. Eustace Clarence.

She remembered holding him. She remembered the pride, the satisfaction. That invisible glow, like a thread, pulsing, pulsing, till she thought she might burst from (joy). _This is my flesh. He will grow and become a man, my child._ That, too- that had been motherhood. And she had tasted of it, and drunk of it, for years.

So she swallowed and nodded, unable to speak.

Millicent touched her hand tentatively. When she spoke there was that same tremble in her touch, which made Alberta flinch involuntarily, but beneath it, she sensed a calmness, a strength, an indefinable strain. It was as if Millicent spoke with the voice of a single, fine brushstroke- but firm, and certain, whispering of some external, indefatigable strength.

"I- Mrs Scrubb, I only met your son a few times, myself. Here and there at tea after the service. or while handing out pewsheets and hymnbooks before the service. He was such a lovely boy, such a wonderful young man. My husband was fond of him."

_Thank you_, Alberta wanted to say, but she could not find it in herself to open her mouth.

_I don't go to church_, were the next words that formed and fell against her immovable lips. Would Millicent judge her? Most likely. Most church people did. (_Insufferable_).

But she hadn't spoken, and Millicent smiled at her. An image of Eustace Clarence, smiling, hands in his pocket and leaning against the doorframe, flickered by.

_Say, Alberta, I was thinking we should clean out that spare room. Do you- do you have any plans for that old painting? _

She burst into tears.

Huge, ugly racking sobs that ripped at her frame and tore at her lungs- this was why she never cried. It was weakness, it was vulgarity, it was _horrid!_ But even as she reached blindly for her handkerchief, she felt a small cloth being pressed into her hands, dabbed against her cheeks.

"There, there," Millicent's voice whispered, "it's all right to cry. Our Lord Jesus cried at the prospect of death. It's all right to cry."

_Thank you, _Alberta thought. _I should say thank you. _But the words that tumbled out of her mouth in-between short uneven gasps formed the sentence, "I don't go to church."

Was that judgement that flashed through Millicent's eyes? Or had she only imagined it out of expectation? But whatever it was, it was gone in a second, and Millicent was pressing the handkerchief into her hands.

"It's still all right to cry," she said, and gave a sad smile. "Death is unnatural, death is an enemy. And Eustace was taken from us all so soon."

_So soon._

Eustace Clarence had used those words, just last week.

_"It's been so soon since the war ended- and it's still going on in China? Alberta, look at that! People don't care, it's on the third page and in a tiny box, but hundreds of thousands of people are dying! Look!" - flinging the newspaper over the breakfast. "And some think that people are going to evolve to be better? I don't know what that is if it isn't a sign of sin and brokenness!" _

How she had both agreed and feared what he had been saying! How angry it had made her. She had snapped back, she remembered, and she remembered the hurt in his eyes; that dim shrinking sensation inside that whispered that she had somehow lost her son. _(Impossible.) _

But she had, she had, and so soon, and now she could never take those words back, the harsh tone. She would never be able to worry over Eustace Clarence again.

_Never. _

_(Impossible.) _

But Millicent was turning to leave, and even now her profile was angled away from Alberta.

"Wait," she called weakly, and Millicent turned again to face her. "I- thank you, Millicent."

Millicent smiled at her gently, sadly.

"I haven't done anything, Alberta," she said, then reached out and clasped Alberta's hand. Too stunned to pull back, Alberta stayed, locked in position. "But I will pray for you."

"I don't need prayers," Alberta responded automatically.

_Prayers did not stop the Wars. Prayers did not stop my son from dying._

Millicent paused, a myriad of half-emotions settling, moving, rearranging themselves on her face in mimicry of Matisse's early Divisionist works. The effect was striking in a surprisingly subtle way, Alberta thought distantly; perhaps she ought to write on it later.

"Nevertheless," Millicent's voice broke through her scattered thoughts, "I shall be praying." She smiled again, her slightly tremulous smile, and released Alberta's hand. "Good day, Alberta."

Alberta nodded stiffly as Millicent walked away.

What a strange woman. How unsure and hesitant, while strangely insistent- _"Nevertheless, I shall be praying"_. It was galling, truly; as if her own voice had not been important when she had said, clearly said, _"I don't need prayers"_! Yet Millicent had not seen fit to inappropriately quote John Donne, as Cousin Claudia had (how Alberta had longed to throw tea in her face when Cousin Claudia had solemnly intoned, _"Death be not proud"_), she had not mercilessly judged Alberta for not going to church.

_"Nevertheless, I shall be praying." _

_"Eustace Clarence, what on earth are you doing?" - seeing her son kneeling- kneeling!- at the foot of his bed. _

_Her son, scrambling to his feet. _

_"Evening, Alberta. I was praying"- defiant tilt of the chin. "I think- I think I should let you know, I've started going to church with Edmund and Lucy." _

_Her own rage and confusion, bursting forth- who was this child? What had he done with Eustace Clarence? _

_"- peeled the skin off- sort of like pulling a bandaid off-" _

Then the curtains fell, and the Fauvist memory rang like a far-off bell in Alberta's numbed ears.

* * *

><p><em>AN: So sorry this is getting so angst-ridden. I'm trying not to, but it's really rather hard, because each time I think reprieve is around the corner, Alberta angrily reminds me that she not only lost her son, but her brother. And three of his children, even if she didn't really care that for them..._


	6. between the shutters

When the last of the tea and coffee had been sipped and only crumbs were left from the cakes and slices, people began to disperse.

"I'm sorry for your loss," mouth after mouth murmured, accompanied by the occasional, "We will keep you in our prayers."

Lips compressed into a tight curve resembling a smile, Alberta wondered just how many people really would be praying for her and Harold. She pictured a line of identical prone figurines occasionally uncovering their heads to cross themselves. It was so absurd she almost wanted to laugh.

_"Nevertheless, I will be praying for you."_

And then Millicent really was there, holding out her hands with that soft, sad smile that whispered, "I, too, have lost a son". Something shifted and grew within Alberta; if she were to fall upon a trope, she might have called it a hole, but it did not feel empty. There was some warmth to it- yet it was not pleasing, and already she could feel the dastardly familiar prickling behind her eyes; that affliction that had come upon her the day after Constable Watson's visit and had not left since.

Without speaking, Millicent looked Alberta directly in the face (as directly and boldly as Eustace Clarence would look at her, even after Lucy and Edmund had stayed with them in Hampstead). And although she could not read or understand what Millicent was projecting (if she was indeed projecting anything), Alberta was strangely comforted.

And now Millicent, too, was gone, and her unfashionable coat and frayed gloves melded into a symphony of coats and gloves.

"So you have met Samuel's wife," Harold murmured in her ear, and she tensed slightly before relaxing.

"I didn't hear you come," she said slightly stiffly. To her ears, it sounded as though a strain of punishment had wound itself into her voice and she wondered dimly at it. Despite the air and space between them she felt Harold stiffen and knew that he had heard it too.

"I- I yes," she said, hoping to break the still swell filling the space, "she spoke with me earlier. She-"

Alberta halted._ She almost understands,_ she wanted to say, but she wasn't sure that that was actually the case._ She didn't irritate me like the others_ would be more accurate, but it was a rather unpleasant thing to say at such a public gathering, and she had already been snappish (_unfairly_, her mind added, somewhat unhelpfully) with Harold. Then she grasped at the thread that Harold had offered her as it led her to a completely different direction.

"- you met Millicent's husband?"

_My peace offering, my apology,_ she thought, _please, Harold-_

"I don't see why you should punish me, Alberta," Harold said, and she detected a shade of (_loneliness_) a cool, faded colour in his voice. But he took the proffered branch and reached out to take her right hand, so tenderly. "Samuel MacPherson came and spoke with me not long after I spoke with Susan."

_Susan_.

Guilt decided to take Alberta's insides and thread them into a little pattern, akin to the skyline of Munch's celebrated _Scream_.

"How is Susan, Harold?"

She felt the pressure around her hand intensify a moment before subsiding as Harold took a shaky breath. The air quivered, tiny breaks tripping over scattered rocks. Harold did not take shaky breaths.

"I've invited her to dine with us tonight" was all he said, and Alberta nodded.

"It is a good thing to do," she murmured. _The right thing to do. The thing I ought to have done._

Harold slowly wound his fingers through hers.

"She looks a little like you," he said softly, and despite herself, she laughed.

"A long time ago, perhaps just a little. But I've aged, Harold." Her voice grew softer as the wooden panels of the door blossomed, formed a surreal box (_sitting beneath the pulpit, now heaved to the back of a car_). "I've aged."

She felt, rather than heard, Harold's tired breath.

"We all have, Alberta," he said, and it almost scared her to hear the brokenness in his voice. "We all have."

Together they watched as the people silently dispersed. Alberta saw, from the corner of her eye, a person in a suit taking the portraits of Eustace Clarence, Victor, Helen, Peter, Edmund and Lucy from the walls.

_Like an exhibition_, she thought, and felt as bare and empty as a gallery stripped of its works.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Sooo I'm trying to bring Susan and Jill in but they keep insisting that Alberta needs just a little more time to herself. Soon, it will be soon! _


	7. cool the dry rock and firm the sand

Harold swore under his breath as the car took a rather unceremonious bump over a pothole.

"Really, Harold," Alberta said automatically, "when you drive so quickly it one feels as though one is on a boat on a breaking wave."

Instantly a crudely painted dragon's head leapt through her mind, disappearing behind white sea spray that quickly faded into black.

_Say, Alberta, I know you don't like the painting in the spare room, but I like the painting and- and I was wondering- I was wondering if I could give it to someone._

"Jill Pole," she whispered. The name brought with it a gust, familiar and yet fresh. She felt resentment that had festered and dried now flaking off, flying (_falling_) through the distant, intangible voice of space and time.

_I used to hate her_, she thought, and was almost surprised. It was almost as though there were two Albertas. There was the one who had lived before that wretched train, the Alberta who was mother to a living son, the confident Alberta who had written for the contentiously satirical Cassiopeia column. Then there was, next to her- yet also her- the Alberta now, the Alberta she did not know. The Alberta who shook hands with a strange, prayerful woman in fraying gloves and an unfashionable coat; the Alberta who said such hurtful things to Harold when he had done nothing but support her.

_But you would say those things before_, a voice in her mind insisted, maliciously gleeful. _Wouldn't you ask him why he didn't have any siblings, wouldn't you question his decisions, mock his choice of attire? _

" - well, if the-"

"I'm sorry," she said, almost stumbling over her words as she interrupted Harold's retort._ I'm sorry_- she had said it, she had actually used those words and meant them. Why had she found it so hard before this? Three tiny syllables to cover a multitude of sins.

Despite the roaring in her ears, she was intensely aware of the silence that had descended within the car. Fleetingly she wondered whether it was worse that she had not listened to Harold's retort and had interrupted him, or whether her rudeness could be offset by her apology.

"Harold, I'm sorry," she said again, and quickly raised her eyes to meet his before glancing away. "Don't- don't take what I mean to heart. I shouldn't say such things."

_I don't know why I do._

There was a heartbeat, a moment when Alberta thought she might not breath. Then Harold spoke, and there was no hesitation in his voice.

"It's all right, Alberta. I understand," he murmured quietly, and with sudden propulsion a sob forced itself through Alberta's throat. "Sh- it's all right," his voice repeated as she placed a hand across her shaking face. The car moved on, silent perambulator.

Presently, she choked down the last sob and drew a halting breath. It was only then that she noticed the car had stopped moving.

_Ah, we're home._

She looked across to Harold and saw the creases in his forehead that had not been so prominent a week before. She saw the darkened bags under his eyes, the subtle quiver at his jawline. She saw the tiny gash on his lower left cheek, where he had cut himself shaving just the day before. She had found him at the basin, his hands shaking.

_"He's not coming home, Alberta." _

_Tired, we are all tired. _

_Aged, how he had aged. _

_"We all have."_

"It's all Harold," she whispered, her voice breaking from the effort. "It's all right, Harold, I'm here."

For a moment, it seemed as if she might not have spoken; and then Alberta noticed a tiny light creeping into Harold's eyes, and as it spread, she felt (just a little) inexplicably _lighter_.

"We should probably start preparing for dinner," he said, his voice low and warm, and she smiled.

_We_. Always such a forward thinking man, it was why she had- she she still loved him. She opened the door, smiling, and slowly swung her legs to the concrete pavement.

"What time did you tell Susan to come?"

And as they discussed banal matters of supper and crockery, Alberta saw a moth that looked for all the world like ripped cotton buffeting against the wind.

The strange and sudden thought struck her,_ it is so beautiful._

_I can't pin them anymore, Alberta, not when they're so alive!_

"Are you coming in?"

Startled, she looked up and saw Harold holding the door open.

"Oh, oh yes," she said, blinking in confusion. "Yes, certainly- thank you."

And she stepped into the hallway, tumbling into a wide courtyard of memories she did not quite understand.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Ok I swear the story will move on. I know this chapter, like the last, is very short, but I don't think they merge into a single chapter very cohesively. And Harold and Alberta just needed another moment. There's an awful lot of assumed backstory in this fic that just keeps fighting to enter the scene!_

_Alberta's column "Cassiopeia" is (loosely) based upon the "Cassandra" column in The Daily Mirror. Hers has a more political vent to it and I would explain more, but Alberta has persistently been indicating her desire that I should include one or more of her articles within this fic, so hopefully explanations will be unnecessary.  
><em>


	8. posterity of the desert

"Well," she said, placing the fork down, "that's the last of the cutlery."

_For the last of the family, _a part of her mind added, and it was as though someone had taken the fork, thrust it through her stomach and mercilessly twisted and pulled.

_"They're my cousins! Your nieces and nephews!"_

Oh, would this never end? Every which way she turned, every time she thought, she stumbled and fell on shard upon shard of glass.

It had started in the afternoon, when Harold had started setting the table, and he had laid the plates and forks out at Eustace Clarence's seat. She had contained herself until Harold had stopped, bread knife hovering over the serviette, and let fall a single tear. _(Harold didn't cry.)_

_"It's all right," _she had said briskly- too briskly, voice burnished like twice-polished brass. _"Susan can sit there."_

Then as Harold had drawn her close, he had made the mistake of kissing her forehead and resting his nose in her hair.

_"Victor, stop it! You'll mess it all up!"_

_"Mess what up?"_

And she had felt his arms squeeze around her, as they had all those years ago, before he let her go. Glaring upwards into his irreverently smirking face, she had attempted to cross her arms with anger, but he had only shrugged, patted her hair once more.

_"Who are you trying to impress, Bertha? Not that stodgy Harold Scrubb, surely?"_

She had needed to find and iron another shirt for Harold after that almost shameful mix of tears and nasal mucus.

And then, there had been the issue of the sitting room walls. The bare beige walls _(like a clinic)._A gallery stripped of its works.

_"We've got to fix this," _Harold had said, his voice taking on a very queer tone. Tremulous, Alberta might have called it, except for the fact that Harold never spoke with a hint of a tremble._"Alberta, you're the art expert in this house. Isn't there anything?"_

Was there anything else in the house! Well, there were the old imitations- Guernica being the most obvious (even though it was no longer new, Alberta couldn't find it in herself to dispense with it)- but then, she couldn't hang that painting up, not now.

_"All those faces. ... Life is so precious"_

But even as she shook her head, she knew she was lying, that there was one (one) that had been there for years, untouched, but palpably present in its hiddenness, and she could no longer ignore it.

"There is one," she had said then, haltingly, "the one that- that Victor gave us, that wretched little thing that Helen chose."

And of course, of course it made sense. It was all wrong, she hated that painting. It showed no craftsmanship, and that florid dragonboat bopping over its merry little waves was oh so cliche. It had been the source of so many arguments between herself and Eustace Clarence (what over? Oh yes, Jill Pole. How insignificant and silly those arguments seemed now. How invalid).

Yet it was perfect, for all its wretched qualities.

Helen had chosen it. (_My apology to you, _the thought briefly flickered in Alberta's mind). Victor- Victor had given it to herself and Harold. Victor, she thought, and felt him sitting next to her, laughing at her, and it was so vivid that she felt she would drown in the empty space pulsing so vibrantly, so cruelly, with (_life_).

She had put it in the room where her niece, Lucy, had stayed during the War, when Victor had gone off to give his series of lectures on Proust and Pound across the American Ivy League universities.

_"Look after them, please, Alberta," _Victor had said, and although he rarely pleaded, she had instantly heard the pleading quality in his voice. _"They're so young. Helen and I can't afford to take them with us, and Susan has been waiting for this American trip for so long."_

At the time, she had complained (as always, a horrid little voice whispered, and she felt slightly ashamed).

_"You know that our house is smaller than yours, Victor. Harold and I have only one son."_

He had caught her by the elbow with that charming smile of his that she knew he only utilised when he really wanted something. How she had resented that smile; how she had always given him what he wanted when he looked so cheerful and charming.

_"That means you have more unused rooms in your house, Bertha," _he had replied, so smoothly, so quickly. That was the thing about Victor; so often when he spoke it was as though he had been following a script, there was hardly a beat when he could not think of something witty or useful. _"And Lucy and Edmund are more than happy to share a room if need be. And even you remember how Eustace and Edmund were chums when they were younger. Wouldn't you want that for Eustace?"_

_"His name is Eustace Clarence," _she had said, automatically, but she hadn't felt too resentful or sounded all that stiff when she informed Victor, two days later, that she and Harold had discussed the matter and would be happy to provide shelter for both Lucy and Edmund in the following weeks.

And hadn't Lucy been a polite little slip of a child? Simpering, she had thought uncharitably at the time, but time coloured and softened one's judgements. Or perhaps it was- but no, Lucy and Edmund couldn't be dead, could they? She had barely had time to know her niece and nephews. _(You hadn't tried)._

"Eustace Clarence was very fond of that," Harold's voice said somewhere, distantly, but his words had barely pierced the veil of memories threatening to envelop her.

_"I was wondering... could I have that painting?" -_then his frame swirled, the scene rippled, and he was ten years old again, sitting with his back to her.

_"Eustace Clarence, what is this?" -_holding a ripped book. A sinking feeling of dread, of inexplicable sadness. _"Eustace Clarence, this is your diary!"_

The ripped cover, the torn pages of the book she had carefully chosen for him, that he had so carefully stored and written in. She could still see his meticulous hand.

_E. has gone dreadfully soft. He tried to stop me from pinning a butterfly the other day! Apparently L. cried when she saw it. Tried to explain what Alberta says, that being a girl doesn't mean one has to be sentimental, but E.-_

Eustace Clarence grabbed the paper from her, glanced at it, and shredded it in eighths. then he dropped it in the wastebasket and looked at her steadily, his chin defiantly raised.

_"I'm not proud of what I wrote, Alberta. I'm jolly well ashamed of how I used to think. Edmund and Lucy were right all along."_

Right? About what? Alberta remembered that strange sensation of confusion, that dreadful swirl in her stomach that whispered, you do not know what your son means.

How familiar she had become with that feeling in later years; how painfully unaccustomed to it.

She remembered, even now, that bewildering cloud that had risen and scattered her mind like a hundred dandelion seeds carried on the breath of the wind.

_"Eustace Clarence, what on earth has brought this on?"_

_"Well, I went on a journey." _How his body had stilled, tensed; almost like a businessman, and he had squared his shoulders just like his father. How proud she had been of him even as she had been apprehensive. How little she had expected his next, most outrageous comments. _"I fell into the painting in the spare room with Lucy and Edmund, and Aslan changed me, he- peeled it all off. And then I saw that they were right, and I was wrong. And I can't go back, Alberta, I can't go back."_

_(I can't go back, I can't go back)._

And that, she thought ruefully, might have been why she hated that painting so much. Falling into paintings indeed! She couldn't think of a sillier story if she tried.

_"But Alberta, it's real! And I haven't told you about Narnia- or Aslan, the great lion- Alberta!"_

She had already begun to regret having mentioned the painting when Harold had stood, his bound a strange mix of enthusiasm with solemnity, and had walked purposefully to the spare room.

"Here it is,"he said, almost triumphantly, as he entered the sitting room, painting in tow.

As she smoothed her shirt, awaiting the chime of the bell that would indicate Susan's arrival, she studied it agian.

The first thing that struck her was the obnoxious open mouth of the dragon boat. And the obvious purple sail, so clearly meant to indicate royalty; it made Turner's paintings seem subtle! And then, of course, the simplicity of the wave. It was almost a solid blue, thick, almost amateurish strokes, lacking the understanding of nuance that even artists like Monet had so easily grasped. Yet there was still something about it- perhaps the way those green wings just opened at the sides, curving behind in an unseen sweep- that somehow-

"It's not very pretty, is it?" said Harold thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. "I wonder what Victor was thinking when he gave it to us."

"I think Helen chose it, or maybe even framed it," said Alberta, and was half surprised to hear the waspish sting had left her voice as she spoke of the woman who had once been her sister-in-law. "Victor was always dreadfully sentimental that way."

Harold laughed a strange laugh, and Alberta thought she detected a sob hidden somewhere within.

"I think a lot of us are more sentimental than we let on," he murmured, and Albert wasn't sure whether the burn she felt was one of shame or not (unless shame could ever feel pleasant). "Didn't Eustace Clarence want to give this painting to that girl of his?"

"Jill Pole," Alberta murmured.

She felt, rather than saw, Harold study her face. His eyes brushed over her and she could almost feel his touch _(whisper soft), _carving _(or reading?) _tiny lines on her blank cheeks.

"You used to dislike that girl so much," he said, presently, and Alberta felt a slight flush of shame. "But you don't sound angry anymore."

_(Angry)._

Now there, that was the deepest shard she had encountered yet, and it dragged its crooked edges through her _(rocky soil) _heart.

"No," she whispered, and closed her eyes, wishing that the action could bring some sort of relief. Intensified darkness was no relief. "No, I can't be angry."

Harold placed his hand over hers, gave it a quick gentle squeeze.

"I might have been angry, too," he said, and she looked up to see him pull an awkward, pained smile. "It's not a very good painting. Even I can see that and I don't know half of what you do about brush strokes and whatnot. But then I remember that I once thought of giving you a volume of Yeats. Would you have spoken to me again if I'd given you _The Celtic Twilight_ as opposed to "The Waste Land"?"

In that moment, she loved Harold more than she thought she could.

"_The Celtic Twilight_ Oh, Harold!" she said, and the absurdity of the thought that Harold had read, let alone considered, giving her a copy of Yeats' works, a genuine laugh scampered from her lips into the quiet air.

Then again, Victor had read Yeats, had written a paper on Yeats. And Harold had been fond of Victor, as Victor, for all his jokes and initial apprehension, had come to genuinely enjoy spending time with Harold. (It had made Alberta happy, to know that; superior, that Victor liked Harold, while she could see Helen's faults, but happy- so happy- that her brother and her husband should enjoy each other's company.)

Unbidden, the lines diffused themselves in her mind until she could see them, tightly printed against an empty page.

_Time drops in decay_

_Like a candle burnt out..._

_Like a candle burnt out_

"Time drops in decay..."

No, she had better stop that train of thought, right now.

_"Bertha, looks like Eustace wants something."_

_Tiny hands grabbing at her skirt._

_"Ahbta! Ahbta!"_

_Herself, bending down to look at him seriously; her little man._

_"Yes, Eustace Clarence?"_

_A sloppy kiss, pressed against her cheek._

She raised up her hand, almost feeling the pressure against her cheek.

"Harold?" she whispered, and he gave her hand a quick sqeeze (pulse of affirmation). "Harold, I miss them."

"So do I, Alberta," he replied, voice thick, and then his arms like drapes were wrapped around her, his nose pressing into her hair. She did not complain.

* * *

><p><em>AN: OK I AM SO SORRY. I said Susan would come in this chapter and she didn't. Rest assured, the doorbell WILL ring and there WILL be a dinner. Next chapter! It's already being written._


	9. dusk through narrow streets

It was only a moment, but as Alberta plunged into her next breath, it felt as though the ebb and tide had stilled, frozen like the ever un-crashing wave on the painting on the wall. Face buried (yet again) against Harold's collar, she felt the slight expansion of his collarbone as he inhaled once; exhaled.

The doorbell rang, irrevocable chime.

She pulled away from Harold.

_What weakness, _a voice whispered in her ear, _depending on Harold like a common weak woman! _

But strangely, this new weakness could brush away that old voice, brush it away as easily as one might swipe at an inconveniently placed cobweb.

"Susan's very punctual," Harold remarked, an arm lingering just a moment around her shoulders before moving back in place. "It's almost seven to the second."

He stood up to open the door, but at the last moment, Alberta raised a hand.

"I think I should go, Harold," she said, realising the truth of her words even as she spoke. (_She's Victor's daughter_.) The words hung suspended between them, and when Harold nodded, there was a heaviness about him that rubbed ceaselessly against the shards scattered across her memory.

Alberta stood up to walk to the door. It felt oddly ritualistic. _("Are you Mrs Alberta Scrubb?")_ When she opened the door, large, dark eyes raised to meet hers.

_Harold you're right_, she wanted to say, _Susan looks a little like me._

She had the same high forehead (widow's peak), the same distinct cheekbones, the straight nose that neither snubbed (as little Lucy's had) nor drooped (as Peter's, like Victor's, had been wont to). Her frame was smaller, though that was to be expected, and her hair was twisted up in an elegant bun that Alberta would never have wasted her time attempting to achieve. Most likely Susan was wearing one of those ridiculous "waspies", too- but she angrily brushed the thought away.

But more than that, it was Susan's _eyes_; those large dark haunted eyes that stilled Alberta's breath. They were almost (_empty_) lacking even the light of Vermeer's lonely women.

"Good evening Aunt Alberta," Susan said evenly, smoothly, and she ran a hand across her perfectly ironed skirt. "Thank you for inviting me to dine with you. It was very kind."

The pleasantries coiled themselves around Alberta's insides like sandpaper. She smiled ("_Your papery thin entertaining smile",_ Victor had once called it, scoffing).

"It is good to see you, Susan," she said, stepping to the side. "Please, come in."

As Susan stepped through the door Alberta saw a hint of the coquette she had last glimpsed- a lifetime ago before that wretched train. But perhaps it had been her imagination, for Susan had half-turned away, obscuring Alberta's (judging) eyes as she rolled away her gloves.

"Could I get you something to drink?" she asked, taking Susan's coat and placing it upon a hook. "It is- warmer than would expect in spring this year."

"Oh," said Susan briefly, flatly, "yes, thank you; a small white would be lovely."

"Oh," said Alberta, and her lips thinned a little. "We do not drink."

The discomfort was almost palpable in the hall, as sharp as the umbrella resting against the stand; as sharp as Susan's figure, still positioned at that half angle in the door.

"Of course," Susan said, after the beat, "Lucy-" but her face crumpled up and she bit upon her lower lip, eyes clenched tightly together. Alberta saw her take her unsteady breaths. "Of course, I do recall. Just- just some ice water would be lovely, Aunt Alberta."

_Not my flesh but my blood._

But blood was distant and weak as water, differentiated only by shade, and as Alberta turned to the kitchen, she couldn't help but wonder whether things might have been ever so slightly different if she had and Harold were not- oh, what term had Victor had so jokingly teased them about before? Oh yes- teetotallers.

* * *

><p>"That dinner was lovely, thank you," said Susan quietly, daintily dabbing the imagined sauce at the corner of her mouth.<p>

"I am glad you could come," Alberta said, wishing she could be as sincere as her words, and, indeed, her tone suggested.

For Susan had been the strangest guest all evening. She had not offered to say grace, as Victor and Edmund and Lucy and Peter had previously done; she had not simply launched into a strange thanksgiving, as Eustace Clarence had been wont to (that was, until she had complained and Harold had had a quiet word with him). She had not smiled and asked who would give thanks, as Helen used to (how easy it had been to quell _her _pleas with an iron glance); she had merely nodded, picked up her fork, and begun eating her salad so quietly that Alberta was not sure she was even capable of chewing.

Attempts to converse with her had been more stilted yet. Susan had no interest in art, and that had killed half of Alberta's conversation starters. She had no interest in the media, and did not follow the Daily Mail, so her own questions regarding Alberta's job had quickly ground to a halt. She had no interest in economics, and had stared politely but blankly as Harold had discussed the debate regarding the dangers of capitalism and the probable benefits of socialism that were being overcome by irrational fears of Communism. She had no interest in poetry- "I used to read a little Tennyson," she had said, but swallowed thickly, as though inhaling through a cotton bud, and Alberta knew that it was not especially a topic she should pursue. When Alberta had asked about Stein and Eliot, she had been treated to a half confused stare. When Alberta had finally asked what Susan actually liked, Susan had given a bitter half laugh.

_"Being foolish and playing with boys and lipsticks,"_ she had said, disgust and hurt flickering dimly in her eyes._ "I thought that Peter and Edmund spent a lot of time here in the past few weeks, surely you heard them say so."_

Alberta had indeed heard nothing of the sort, and she had looked almost helplessly at Harold, hoping he would say something. But he had only given a minute shake of his head, a tiny upwards quirk of his left eyebrow the only suggestion that he, too, had nothing to say.

The meal had thus continued in the heavy quiet, knives and forks scraping against the wall of silence that mounted and swelled in the room.

"Perhaps you'd like to have a coffee?" said Harold, breaking through the cooling silence. "Alberta, why don't you show Susan the sitting room?"

As Susan quietly nodded her assent, Alberta looked at Harold, unsure of whether she wished to thank him or thump him for the suggestion.

"Come, Susan, it's this way," she said instead, walking smartly to the hallway and turning to the right. She flicked on the switch, and the bright light that came hurtling to meet them stilled her in her steps. She blinked, and as she did so, she felt, rather than heard, a strange half breath behind her.

"Where did you _find _that?"

Still half dazed by the light, she turned around to look at her niece, questioningly.

"Find what, Susan?"

For Susan's eyes had grown wide, and in place of the frightening dreariness, there was a strange, almost wild (hunger) light to her face. Her hands were tightly clenched by her side; Alberta saw her open her fists, clench them, re-open them, re-clench them.

"That painting," Susan said, and her voice rose by half an octave. She blinked rapidly, and for a moment it looked as though she might have cried. "That boat."

_In the spare room. _

"It was a gift," she said slowly, "from your parents. Why do you ask, Susan?"

But Susan shook her head, her mouth ever so slightly open; her eyes oddly fearful and filled with some other emotion Alberta could not discern. Was it anger? Or was it longing?

_"__Aslan?__"_she whispered, so quickly, so softly and so thickly that Alberta almost missed it. But she didn't miss it, she heard it, and she heard Eustace Clarence, all those years ago-

_"__Alberta, I haven__'__t told you about Aslan!__"_

"What did you just say, Susan?" she said, only half aware that she was speaking quickly. "Did you-"

But Susan shook her head, looking to the front door and pursing her lips together.

"It was a _game,_" she said fiercely, as though convincing someone. "A game for children. And we grew up- _I _grew up. I _had _to grow up."

Although she did not quite know what Susan was talking about, Alberta thought her niece's words sounded something like a mantra, like a press release a politician might give when the issues were falling completely beyond their grasp.

"Why don't you take a seat-" she began pleasantly, but Susan quickly backed into the hall, picked up her gloves and hat, and shook her head.

"Thank you for tonight, Aunt Alberta, but I really must be off," she said, sounding so smooth that if Alberta had not been with her in the living room, she would not have suspected anything had happened. "Please give my regards to Uncle Harold. You have been most kind- both of you. He told me that you were the one who asked them to- who asked- at St Bart's-" she shivered visibly, and Alberta found herself shaking, too.

"I had to, you couldn't-" she began helplessly, but could not finish. _I lost my brother and my son, and you lost your entire family. _

Susan nodded, her gaze fixed upon the timber panels of the hallway.

"- thank you," she said, quietly, with the slightest of tremors in her voice. "You have been very kind. Goodnight."

And with that, she turned the lock, opened the door, and left.

* * *

><p><em>AN: OK here is where I offer my prolific apologies for my tardiness. The build up to Easter and the beginning of Eastertide has been very busy in terms of music, and once I got out of that I hit the Assessment Weeks From Hell. Literally. But I have not abandoned this piece, and I have no intention of abandoning it, and to anyone who is still following this, you are a gem and I owe you! _


	10. the unpurged images of day

"It's pointless, Harold," she said almost brusquely as they went to bed that night. Harold, half started by her tone, turned the bedside lamp off early and had to turn it on again. The shadows flickered back into being. "I've never known Susan and I never will. She's neither Victor nor Helen and I can't make her out."

_Not even Eustace Clarence tried. _

But Harold had only furrowed his brow and twisted his hands over the quilt. He did not speak for several moments, but breathed in and out heavily in that way that suggested that he was on the verge of saying something significant.

"I don't think anyone has really tried with Susan," he said eventually, as though still working out his words. "When I last spoke with-" his voice faltered for a moment, and Alberta knew.

_Victor. When you last spoke with Victor. _

It twisted her then to know that her husband had spoken with her own brother more than she had.

_Victor, I'm sorry. Can you hear? _

But of course he couldn't, and she shrank against the headboard, pillow squashed in a thin line.

"- When I last spoke with Victor, he said he was concerned about Susan," Harold eventually continued. "And that- that's why I think maybe you ought to try, Alberta."

The distance and discomfort of the dinner flew against Alberta's stomach, pinning her against the headboard.

"If you're feeling so gracious about it, why don't you try?" she snapped, wondering why she felt so vaguely infantile.

Harold gave an impatient sigh, the muscle in his lower cheek twitching.

"She's your niece," he said tightly, "For God's sake just think about it, Alberta; if I try to spend too much time with her, what will people _say?" _

And it was true, she knew it was true; she wouldn't have been able to bear the whispers and stares at work, even if she only marched in twice a week to hand in her article and have a short chat with Harry.

_And she is my niece, after all. _

She sighed and slid down to rest her head upon her pillow.

"Monday," she said, tiredly. "I will go see Susan on Monday."

Harold didn't say anything, but when he turned off the lamp, his hand was so gentle she could hardly hear the click.

* * *

><p>She wasn't entirely sure what made her wake up that night. It wasn't a common occurrence, and even as a child she had enjoyed the fact that once she would lay her head down and shut her eyes, sleep would come, swift and deep, and depart regularly at six in the morning.<p>

But tonight- or this morning, she wasn't sure- she lay on her back staring at the ceiling, the regularity of Harold's breathing filling the room with a gentle pulse. In the corner of her eye, the curtain flickered; almost imperceptible, but it gestured towards her, and she found herself slowly sitting up, easing herself off the mattress; walking to the half-open window.

Putney was quiet. Outside, on the half-deserted streets, a lamp flickered. In the fluttering light she heard a restless neighbour's dog emit a small howl.

_The conscience of a blackened street_

_Impatient to assume the world,_ she thought, and suddenly an infinite ache filled her heart, and she felt so _tired. _

Blackened streets. She recalled the Blackouts during the war; how glad she had been that Eustace Clarence had been safe at boarding school; how angry that she had needed to do so for a war at all.

Her own words, from a column she had written not long after the end of the war, came back to her with the next breeze, tiny words slicing across her skin.

_"The tiredness of London today is almost entirely its own fault. Why should a people agree to go to war, fight the war, endure the blackouts and the bombs and the carnage that has wreaked havoc upon the very fabric of our society- and then attempt to justify it? Our post-war rhetoric has failed; the people have succumbed. The ennui has seeped into our very bones, and this is our cry: no more war! Yet there is still conflict continuing in the countries in the East, and our nation is even now contemplating entering fresh wars in this excessive red fear. _

_The British Empire has failed; and well it ought to have, for it was built on conquest and battle. Now is the time to put aside the bombs and guns. This is what our collective ennui is calling for; this peace is the only balm for our nation." _

She shivered.

Eustace Clarence had been mildly troubled by that, she recalled, and she had not understood why at the time. Certainly it had not been excellently received, and she had received angry letters from wives and widows (and almost-widows) and mothers all defending the notion that their husbands and fiances and sons had died for a purpose. She had spoken with Harold, and, at work, with Harry: while Harry had told her that she had laid it on a little thick, she _was _running the Cassiopeia column, and it was her role to show the people how their own beloved nation was turning into the Cassiopeia they so frequently detested.

War, perhaps, she could rationalise. But death, _death_, it crept up upon her and seized, and stole, and she could not balance anything in her mind.

A _train_.

_The monster of modern technology, _she thought wryly, but even that did not make her laugh.

There was a train; there was a steel wreck. And then she had no son, no brother, no nephews; only one niece, as distant and unknown as any woman coming and going and talking of Michelangelo.

But this was madness. Eustace Clarence was a smart boy, a strong boy, he was her _son_! How could he have been taken so easily?

_Why? _

_Eustace Clarence, when will you come home? _

But he _wouldn't_, he would never- could never come back. He was in a wooden box, surrounded by darkness that he would never perceive, beneath freshly laid grass without even a headstone to mark the space.

_"We'll inform you when the headstone has been erected, Ma'am," _the cemetery worker had informed her, superficial sympathy etched across his forehead.

Was that only yesterday, or, even, today?

She shivered as a breeze came through the window again and wrapped her hands around her upper arms.

_"It is always hard to lose a son." _

But how would Millicent MacPherson _know_? Had she watched her son sleep at night, watched him grow up, watched him pin insects to boards and draw diagrams, and go away to school and come back with such mature opinions about the folly of treating boys and girls differently? Had she watched her son fall into an attraction to a girl (for Alberta could not deny that her son had clearly been attracted to that Jill Pole, though whatever he had seen in her Alberta still had no idea), felt the pain of growing distance and the ache of unending love?

_Eustace Clarence!_

And he had always looked so innocent in his sleep. She had sat by him in his younger years, watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, seen his light lashes nestling in the fold where lid met lid.

_And now he will never wake. _

It would have been easy so easy to give in, to wail and keen. She had to clutch at her stomach and shove a fist into her mouth, and even then the shuddering overpowered her, and she slid against the wall, tears forcing themselves through the tiny _(frozen) _spaces of her eyes.

And then a cry escaped, half-human, between a wail and a croak, and she could not hold back. The tears came with unforgiving relentlessness, and she felt each gasp as though it was throwing her body against a wall.

_Now they will never wake. _

But it felt as though _she _was the one who was dead, that the others had left her behind; that Victor had taken his wife and his daughters and _her son_, and they had left her in this horrible, horrible nightmare.

She wasn't sure when Harold's arms closed around her, and she fought briefly before another cry slackened her arms; she wasn't sure whether they were all her tears falling to her darkened nightgown, or Harold's as well. At some point, breathing became difficult and her hands shook uncontrollably _("shh, shh, Alberta") _but still they came, still the tears, still the raw rake ploughed against her heart, and still, _still, _she saw their faces, heard their voices.

If she cried, would they stay? But that was the nightmare, still; and she glimpsed in that moment _another _way forward, a quiet escape (_but you may lose their voices) _and still in that moment, her vision darkened, and Harold's arms did not loosen around her. In the breath of another breeze, she let the darkness seep in.

* * *

><p><em> AN: Because the stages of grief really aren't all that clear-cut, and it has, after all, only been a week. _

_Also, for those who are interested, Harry" is Harry Guy Bartholomew, editorial director of the _Daily Mirror _following Rothermere's disposal of his shares in 1931. Known for his liberal, anti-authoritarian views, he turned the _Daily Mail _into a tabloid and encouraged William Connor to write the 'Cassandra' column, which is replaced in this story by Alberta's column.  
><em>


	11. the sky throbs like a feverish forehead

Alberta stirred her tea slowly, eyes fixed studiously on the table. Neither she nor Harold felt particularly inclined to discuss what had happened yesterday (particularly last night); or at any rate, she preferred not to mention it, and Harold had not pushed the issue.

She was thankful for that; he had not said anything when she had finally made her way to the dining table, eyes so swollen her lids had receded into rounded flaps that resembled puff pastry after ten minutes in the oven. He had not said anything about the fact that she had been rubbing her neck; he had not mentioned anything about the fact that she had woken up in the chair beside the window, neck resting (somewhat awkwardly) against the pillow from their bed.

In truth (here she placed her spoon down, watching the milk swirl and melt into the water and wondering how strange it was that milk and water could taste good with tea leaves but were so odious together without)- in truth, she did not know _how _to feel about Harold's actions. She knew- or perhaps she would once have _thought _she knew- that she should be angry. Chivalry was misguided at best; chauvinistic and discriminating at its worst. Yet somewhere, somehow, she had- _liked _what Harold had done. It had been thoughtful, if badly carried out (for her neck really was stiff, and she had some difficulty turning to the right, unless she twisted from her waist and kept her neck fairly still). But-

"I forgot to strain it." Harold's apologetic voice sliced into her thoughts.

Belatedly, Alberta realised that she had been frowning at the tea.

"Oh no, it's fine," she said half absently, dusting his apology off. "After all, Eustace Clarence prefers his tea unstrained, goodness knows why, so-"

_(so when he comes down)_

The words hung, suspended in the air; bunch of knotted threads and sugar coated knives.

When, oh when, would she cease feeling like this? Would the rawness ever have time to age, form a scab, recede to a dull scar? Or would it forever be raw, raked across a shredder and raked again, so that she would never forget it?

It hadn't been this hard when her mother had passed away, addled and bedridden. Or perhaps it was only that she had lost her mother years before the illness claimed her, and she had had her time to mourn, had had Victor alongside-

_Victor always strained his tea. _

She set her teacup down. Most likely Harold had not let the tea sit for long enough, and that was the reason for its strangely bland flavour. _(most likely not)._

Dimly, she saw a shadow in the corner of her vision, and she mentally batted at it.

_Not again, not again, not-_

- but it was Harold, and he placed his left hand over hers, almost imperceptibly.

There was a silence, like the stillness over a lake before a breeze, before he murmured in her ear.

"Do you know, the first time I watched Eustace Clarence brew a pot of tea, he almost put the milk into the pot with the water?"

In spite of herself, Alberta laughed.

"He could be the oddest child," she whispered, words bubbling up and choking in her throat. "And he'd pile his tea cups to the side, a cup in front of a butterfly."

"Or beside a series of transistor diagrams," Harold added, and in that moment she could see Eustace Clarence, almost clear as day; bleary-eyed and standing in the doorway, raking his right arm across his face.

_Morning, Alberta, _he would say; _morning, Harold._

And then he would sit at the chair, just left of Harold- his favourite spot- and would reach for the toast-

- but she knew, even as she blinked, that it was not so, that Eustace Clarence was _(gone) _not coming back, _not coming back. _

Behind her, Harold was rubbing her back lightly with his free hand. She sniffed, unsure herself whether it was driven by comfort, or frustration, or some other emotion she could not place her finger on. Harold's hand stilled, and still she did not know how she felt.

But something had to be said, and her tea was getting cold, and so she _(didn't have the words and what sort of journalist would simply run out of words, and what sort of inadequate being did that make her if she couldn't find the words)- _she needed to say something, so she patted Harold's arm and nodded towards his chair.

"Come on, before the toast is inedible," she said firmly, her voice echoing as though over a vast body of sleepless water. "Then we could- should- start sort- start cleaning Eustace Clarence's room."

_Sorting through. Sorting through because-_

But she couldn't go there, couldn't form the words, not this morning, not just yet.

_(- because he can't, he never will)_

She tried to ignore the strange pang in Harold's eyes, that awful flash that mirrored her own heart.

_Nonsense, Alberta, _she thought, smartly adding a layer of blueberry jam to her toast. In the dining room light it glistened, almost the way a wave might before forming a crest and breaking, scattering, across rocks, incandescent silver shifting in her grasp.

She quickly picked it up and took a bite. The crumbs suspended, dry and cold, at the back of her throat.

* * *

><p>She surveyed the boxes Harold had taken out.<p>

_We can store things in bags, you needn't pull out the moving boxes, _she had said, but Harold had only looked at her, his eyes heavy, and she had known- if Eustace Clarence was only moving, gone for a little, then there was the possibility-

So she had grasped Harold's limp hand with both hers, pressed a quick kiss to his pale knuckles.

_He's not coming back, _she thought, but couldn't say. But perhaps he understood her after all, for he swallowed tightly and nodded briskly, eyes dark and lonely like a lampless street after sunset.

"We could- should- tidy this place," he said at last, only his words were more like tiny breaths, as though breathing was enough difficulty and speaking would be an effort to break him.

And indeed they should tidy the place, for Eustace Clarence had left a dreadful mess in his wake. (She tried not to wince at the multiple connotations of that dreadful word, and decided to eliminate it- at least temporarily- from her vocabulary.) Those scrunched up papers on his desk, for instance; why were they there? Her Eustace Clarence was- had been- such a scrupulous child. He might have kept stashes of things at times- she had been no fool with regards to his stash of condiments as a child- but they were always boxed and neatly kept.

"I'll sort through his papers," she said, moving towards the desk, "you can-"

"I'll look through his wardrobe," Harold said, and a look of intense pain crossed his face. "I- after all, he borrowed several of my shirts and ties. I should- for work-"

"Yes," said Alberta, hoping her voice was not shaking. "For work."

Silently, she moved towards the papers.

Here were diagrams of transistors, drawn with a very even hand. _Placement of diodes affects flow of electrons, _she read, followed by a series of scientific notes she could not quite understand. After a point, she doubted Eustace Clarence himself would have understood, for his writing descended into an indecipherable scrawl. She carefully bunched the papers together and bundled them in a pile.

Here were quotations that he had copied out; passages from the Bible (Psalm 71 seemed rather a long psalm to her; not that she was particularly familiar with the Bible or the Psalms, but the psalms she knew tended to be short and along the "Praise the Lord for He is wonderfully made" vein). Quotations from that George MacDonald he had developed an almost disturbing admiration for. She began to gather and bundle those sheets, too, when one caught her eye. "_To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth", _she murmured. _"- And sometimes that bath is jolly painful, like peeling off a scab. Thank you, Lord, for plunging me in that bath. March 17 1949." _

_The day before the train, _she thought, and it felt so impossibly long ago, even though it had only been nine days.

Cleansing bath of truth. It was a pretty phrase, even if it was untrue. There was nothing cleansing about the truth. Truth was cold, and it was hard, and it whispered to her that this, _this _was the last thing she could hold from her son; a small sheet of paper, dated the day before his death; musings on another man's words, not even his own!

Although her eyes were dry, they were hot, and she blinked several times, steadying herself at the table before continuing on to the crumpled sheets.

There were several of them, and it did not seem any of them had very much writing. She paused, hand hovering over the first sheet. Should she even be reading these?

They could merely be diagrams again, or quotations with a misspelling; but she was not sure.

_If Eustace Clarence were to come home after the weekend, would you read these? _

An image flashed into her mind; the hours before Eustace Clarence requested to spend the weekend with the Pevensies- (Susan's dark eyes burned into her memory, and she turned the thought aside fretfully). She recalled the hushed conversations in the sitting room, standing in the doorway and seeing that Jill Pole leaning in-

Quickly, clinically, she folded out the first crumpled sheet.

_Dear Jill, _she read (and felt both vindicated in her suspicion, and guilty, as though she was participating in some strange form of trespass), _I've been thinking about what you said the-_

The next was hardly more enlightening.

_Dear Jill, remember what Father Andrew was saying on Sunday? And what you said to Mrs MacPherson? I-_

_Dear Jill, can you please explain to your mother that when I said- _the next sentence was scratched out. _I meant- _

_Dear Jill-_

At some point, she put the unfinished, unsent letters down, the _dear Jill_s circulating and echoing in her mind like a deafening symphony playing on a broken gramophone.

All these letters, she thought, letters that would never be sent- or received. For Jill Pole's mother, whomever she was, would be carrying out a similar purge, either today or sometime soon (for even sentimental people had to be practical at some point).

Or would she find letters? Had Eustace Clarence found the words that she herself could not find now, had he sent a finished letter over? Her son was no poet; he had more his father's skills than hers. Explanation and logic he excelled at, but eloquence was not his forte; each of his unfinished letters had been as cryptic as the first.

She was struck by a sudden urge to call upon this mysterious Mrs Pole, the mother of that Jill Pole (always 'That Jill Pole' in her mind, as if 'That' was her first name and 'Jill' a sort of hyphenated middle name), to see what this woman knew of her son, if there was anything of Eustace Clarence in _their _house that she might be able to keep- at least for safekeeping. And she always liked completed files.

_Visit Mrs Pole? _

The very idea was ludicrous. They had never exchanged a word in their entire lives.

Shifting her head ever so slightly, she watched Harold as he tiredly took out a suit, folded the shirt, sat heavily on Eustace Clarence's neat bed. He raised his head and met her gaze, and in his absence, Eustace Clarence swelled and filled the room, and the tears (was there no end to them?) came rushing up and battled their way out of her heavy, swollen eyes, spilling onto the crumpled letters before her.

Slowly, unsteadily, she felt herself move towards Harold.

"Here, Alberta," he whispered, his voice hoarse, and she reached out blindly and took his hands.

_We can't continue the purge in the remains of this day, _she wanted to say, or _he's not here but can't you feel him Harold? _

But like the unfinished letters, like the words of the past week, they remained stuck in her throat, and she could not find the right groupings to vocalise her muddied thoughts.

"I think- we have done enough," Harold murmured, and she let him lead her, quietly, out of the quiet, still room.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Oh my stars. I am SO SORRY about the amount of time it took to get this chapter up, and I am SO SORRY about the quality- or lack thereof- of said chapter. It's been a few hellish months in terms of sickness, uni work, music commitments and competitions and then a few emotional roller-coasters along the way... but even so, I am sorry and I will not keep you waiting THIS long for another installment. _

_For those interested, this chapter takes place the day before 'Laetare Jerusalem'- not that I expect Alberta to be aware of the irony that she is attempting to purge her son's bedroom the day before Mothering Sunday. I do not think the Scrubbs know that much about the church calendar. _


	12. before the taking of toast and tea

Lunch was a quiet affair, the _dear Jill_s still ringing in Alberta's ears, Eustace Clarence's desk still scattered with crumpled sheets that she had not been able to bring herself to fold, sort and bundle up. Harold had hardly fared better; he had almost broken down at the sight of the shirt he had bought Eustace Clarence for his sixteenth birthday (_you'll be wanting that when you start building connections! Connections? Why, so you can get ahead of your college friends, of course!). _It was some surreal nightmare, seeing Harold so weak, so tired, to see tears running down his face, indiscriminately mixed with mucus.

Who would have thought? And they had considered themselves (at least Alberta had), such strong and reasonable individuals.

But there was nothing reasonable about death.

Perhaps there might be something poetic about it, if one was into that sort of thing. But then Death had claimed Victor, too, and she and Harold knew very little poetry save for T. S. Eliot and post-_Responsibilities _Yeats with which he had wooed her, oh so many years before. No, Victor might have seen poetry in Death, but he was gone, and now there was nothing.

_Am I a sister anymore? Do I even count as a mother?_

Oh, if only she could stop just wallowing in this stupor! Of course she was still a sister, of course she was still a mother, memories of Eustace Clarence tugging at her trousers and calling her _Ahbta _all too fresh in her mind!

(But they were _absent, _Victor and Eustace Clarence were both absent! How could she claim sisterhood or motherhood in the absence of a brother and a son? And how was it that their very presence could be so stifling, so overwhelming, when they _weren't there?)_

_Oh, _to escape these thoughts!

Wildly, she considered what she must look like to an outsider. What would she see? A woman with Alberta Scrubb's dark hair, tightly knotted in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her eyes? Why, dark, beady things hidden beneath grotesquely swollen lids.

But the splitting sensation could not be forced and called upon; she _was _sitting at the table. She was staring at her cold lunch, her eyes were grotesquely swollen, and she _was _Alberta Scrubb, could feel it in every pore and pulse.

Looking across to Harold, she saw the weariness in his eyes, the discernible droop of his shoulders.

"You should eat, Alberta," he said, gently, tapping his fork on his plate.

Her stomach churned at the thought.

"I'd rather not," she murmured, and Harold smiled tautly, his eyes glassy and unfocused.

_I know._

She picked up her fork and forced herself to swallow the lettuce.

"Perhaps you could call on Susan," Harold suggested quietly, pushing his plate forwards and folding his napkin on the table. "I'll clear up today, Alberta."

_I thought I was visiting Susan on Monday, _she wanted to retort, but the words sounded petulant even in her ears.

_Visit Susan._

_I don't want to, _she almost blurted out, but even as the thought formed, she was ashamed of herself. _How can I be petulant when she is all that is left of Victor?_

And there, _there_, how it burned, because Susan wasn't the least bit like Victor, wasn't the least bit her intellectual, overly joyful father. She didn't look like him, except for that little furrow of her eyebrows when she frowned; she shared none of his interests, none of his mannerisms (save that unique eyebrow furrow).

Susan wasn't even like Helen, which Alberta might have been able to stomach (perhaps). As much as she did not personally like Helen as a friend, Helen had, over the years, come to be part of Victor-and-Helen, even as she suspected people may have looked at her and Harold as Alberta-and-Harold; but the Susan of last night's dinner had lacked the cheerful flightiness of her mother, had lacked the effervescent grace and easy conversational skills. This Susan was a rod, cold and distant, and it burned Alberta to the core to think that she was _all that was left._

_I'm a little worried about Susan, to be honest, Bertha; she's drifting a little, and Helen and I haven't the faintest clue- well, I won't burden you with that!_

But now, that burden was all that was left.

So she nodded wordlessly as she stood up and headed for the front door, pressing her hand lightly against Harold's shoulder as she walked past.

_Susan is all that is left._

* * *

><p>The thought repeated itself in her mind, like a broken record, till it formed a beat of its own. <em>Susan is all that is left. Susan is all that is left.<em>

Passing through the ceaseless streets, it was almost as though she was motionless, and the houses drifted by with each syllable of the chant. Eventually she found herself in Bloomsbury, and presently she stood before the red bricked house she knew so well. It was achingly familiar, she could almost see Victor standing on the front porch, Helen at his side; now sitting on the top step, aged ten, hobbling on crutches after a particularly violent rugby match.

A surprisingly crisp breeze curled its fingers insistently through her shirt, scraping against her skin, and she shivered as she thrust her hand out to ring the doorbell.

Almost immediately, she heard the footsteps, and the green wooden door crept open.

_It is almost like staring in a mirror, _Alberta thought, and resented Susan for looking like _her _and not her own father.

Susan opened her mouth slightly, then furrowed her brow (_like Victor, just like Victor- _and how her own breath caught at that!_). _Alberta could almost hear the questions, jumping about like an Aeschylian chorus, within her mind.

"Aunt Alberta," she said slowly, "I wasn't expecting to see you. Would you come in?"

Alberta followed her, grateful for the hook Susan had cast at her.

"I wasn't expecting to come," she admitted, and Susan gave a short, bark-like laugh.

"I was so rude at dinner that I deterred Mrs Alberta Scrubb from coming to call?" she said, bitterly, entering a dimly lit sitting room, and Alberta had to check a momentary, surging urge to slap her niece's face. But Susan was already sighing tiredly, and her face was so pale and tired, and Alberta could see the lines in her face that make-up had kept hidden the other day (yesterday, had it just been yesterday?), and the urge quickly faded.

"Would you want some Turkish delight?" Susan asked suddenly, brusquely, like an accusingly clean sheet on a windy day.

Alberta blinked. In front of her, almost an inch from her nose, was a silver box with a green ribbon. She could smell the offending confectionery, its almost sickeningly sweet sugar coat wafting like a wall to her nose. She twitched.

Glancing up, she saw that Susan had seen, and she wondered briefly whether she should apologise for her response. Then Susan gave an oddly tremulous smile, and some strange emotion quirked within her eyes.

"I- it's not very tasty is it?" she said, and her voice quivered. "I don't know how he could stand them."

Alberta wasn't entirely certain who 'he' was, but she suspected he was not one of the boys Susan had flirted with at a dance.

"If you don't like them then why keep them in the house?" she asked, bewildered, and Susan snapped the box shut, her face turning a disturbingly pallid shade of green.

The silence in the room swelled, invisible arms of resentment pushing and prodding at Alberta. She had never felt less welcome, less wanted, less _important _(and how strange it was to realise how significant that slight felt, how- ironically- demeaning).

_It was only a fair question, _she thought, but could not even muster a brusqueness within her mind; not when Susan looked so old, so tired, so (guilty) shattered.

"It was Edmund's," Susan murmured at length, her lips pale and barely moving. She looked like a sculpture, a stone figurine in a flickering grey room. Her eyes were fixed on the corner of the carpet rug. Alberta watched the tiny bump in her throat as it quivered, momentarily bulged, receded. "F- father bought it for him. A box for his birthday, each year; ever since Father returned."

"Oh."

Was there anything to say to that? Alberta shifted in her chair. It was such a Victor thing to do, to buy his son a box of sweets, even if Victor (to her knowledge) had never cared much for the sweets himself. Or perhaps that had been licorice?

(And what sort of sister was she if she could not remember _that?)_

She glanced at Susan, but Susan did not seem particularly inclined to speak, either.

_She has not offered you a drink, _a voice whispered in Alberta's mind, and she brushed it away. Why drink if she was not thirsty?

So they sat in silence, lengthening shadows peering further and further in through the paned glass, until the darkness nudged at Susan's feet. She rose at the same time as Alberta, glancing at the light switch then at her feet, before moving to the switch and tugging at the cord.

A warm, yellow glow filled the room, and the shadows lightened, grew shorter, receded from the room like frightened cats.

"The house is too big," said Susan, presently, barely a quaver in her voice. She gestured listlessly at the chaise lounge and sitting room chairs. "I'll likely have to sell it."

"No!"

The word ripped itself from Alberta's lips before she had even realised she meant it. She did, though, she knew, her chest heaving and her breath oddly ragged- she did mean it. This was Victor's house, and it was here that he had last picked her up and twirled her- when she had announced her engagement. She had resented it- and how that felt like the twist of a serrated knife to her gut- but the memory was there, and Victor had held her in this very room, laughed at her, and Susan should never have to sell it. She tried, briefly, to imagine selling their house in Hampstead, and she couldn't. Leave Hampstead, where Eustace Clarence had learned to walk and talk, where Harold had wooed her with T. S. Eliot and they had debated the merits of Kandinsky over Matisse?

Susan laughed humourlessly even as the thoughts swirled and multiplied in Alberta's mind.

"This house was for a family of six. I can't possibly sustain the costs of upkeep- especially not in Bloomsbury." A tiny crease flitted across her forehead, but it was gone so quickly, and Susan's forehead had resumed its creamy smooth complexion, that Alberta wondered she had not imagined the whole thing.

The cold, clinical tone! Did she have no feelings? Did she not realise that her _family _was _gone_? And she was trying to sell the house, talking of selling the place!- almost as if to erase their existence, almost as if-

- almost as if she had conducted a sweep of their rooms and bundled their letters together.

Something uneasy stirred like a spoon in Alberta's stomach.

"Perhaps Harold and I may be able to help," she offered, trying to block out the nasty gnawing sensation that she suspected was something akin to guilt. "We have-"

But Susan shook her head delicately, standing up and threading her way to the furthest window. In the shadows, from the side, Alberta felt almost as though she had split from her body and been hurtled twenty years to the past, and was staring through some strange, murky mirror.

"It is kind of you to offer," Susan murmured, her voice soft and piercingly collected, "but I'm afraid I couldn't-"

"Your father would want me to help," said Alberta in a low voice. "Back in the war, when you went to America with Victor and Helen, I took your brother and sister into my house because he asked me to help."

Susan turned to face her, then, a steely determination in her eyes.

"Help me, then," she said, and raised her chin. "Help me sell the house and move out. I can't stay here."

* * *

><p><em>AN: Soo I__'__m mostly writing this story for myself now, just to prove that I can actually finish it. It is evolving into something much more complex than the original A Mother__'__s Musings__ and I am afraid it is, at times, running away from me__…__ but if I can at least write it, that__'__s a success._

_If, however, people are happy to review and critique this, then that would be so much nicer! The review button is there for a reason, just saying__…_


	13. dissolve the floors of memory

"I can't believe she wants to _sell _the place," Alberta repeated disbelievingly, fumbling for her fork for the umpteenth time. "I knew Susan was flightier than her siblings, but-"

A hundred reasons arose in her mind, diffused through the lights, the windowpanes, the panels of the door, the carpet strands.

"- at the very least, it's a poor investment move," she finished lamely, knowing that it was not quite what she had meant to say. Harold raised an eyebrow at her and she busied herself with the lentil salad.

If one blurred one's eyes enough and pushed the sweet potato mash _just so_, it looked vaguely like a Rothko abstract; _Slow Road to Abstraction_ had always been one of her favourites, with its visionary division of the compartments of that vivid rusty brown.

_Rusty brown, just like Eust- _

The food in her stomach churned like a palette of cold paint.

_Eustace Clarence, are you there? I do think of you, I do! _

"I sometimes- also- forget," Harold said, haltingly; and blinking, she realised that a silence had (once again) enveloped the room. "Just for a moment, here or there- when you were out, and I was reading that abstract Phillips wrote about that machine he's working on. Or when I wake up, and I don't even think-" He swallowed and his eyebrows quirked inwards, his left cheek muscle twitching.

Alberta pushed her lentil salad away. Food had rarely looked so unappetising.

"I just want him to come home," she whispered, and now that she spoke, she knew that this was what she had meant to say, all along. "I just want him to come home and clean his room. I don't want to remember that I- snapped at him, the day before he went away- because he called me 'Mother'- and he mentioned that Pole girl in some sentence- I just want him to come back."

_And staying here helps me think that he's still here, that I haven't just forgotten him. _

Because Eustace Clarence was in every pore of this house; he had spilled tea at this table, drawn diagrams on that wall, carefully pinned butterflies by that sofa; he had stumbled down the stairs, bleary-eyed, had hidden unopened confectionary jars in the laundry. He had sat on this chair, had even helped buy the lentils she was eating right now; _he had been here. _

And even if he _wasn__'__t _here now, _being _here made him feel so much more real, reminded her that he had been- _was_- her son, that she _was _his mother, that it hadn't been some fantasy or dream. And that was why, oh, why it burned that Susan could simply want to _sell _her house. How could you want to lose all those memories, forget those shared realities?

"Maybe Susan isn't like us, Alberta," Harold said gently, and she wondered why she was so surprised that, at times, it seemed that he could read her mind. Force of habit, perhaps, but even so she felt that little thrust as her focus was torn from herself to Harold.

"What do you mean, Harold?" she asked, unsure of whether her voice was more fearful or more biting. "Do you wish to sell the house, too?"

Harold furrowed his brow, seemingly unconcerned by her harsh tone.

"It's not that I want to _sell _the house," he said slowly, as though sounding out his thoughts. "But perhaps it would do Susan good to- be away from it."

Alberta turned her head to him. Did he mean-

"A lease?"

Harold drummed his fingers on his knee for a moment.

"I'm not sure," he admitted, "I'd have to speak with Mark or Simon first. Preferably Simon, he's one of the branch managers of Hamptons- but Mark did call asking if I was up to having lunch with him tomorrow..."

She let him continue talking aloud, his words forming a comforting drone that blended with the walls, framed the tall, narrow windows.

It could work, she thought; leasing the house; it would change things, but all would not be _lost, _at least; and with tenants there came the possibility of subsidising living expenses elsewhere- and Harold _did _have the right friends to speak with such matters about. It could work, and she would not have to let go of the house where she had grown up with Victor, where he had come home from boarding school with such amusing tales and impressive results, where she had brought Harold to meet her parents for the first time. And she could still tell Susan that she would help, as she had promised.

"Yes," she murmured, as Harold drew breath; "yes, I think that you should meet up with Mark tomorrow."

"Will you be all right, Alberta?" he asked, and she could read the concern etched into his face. Resentment mingled with fondness and some strange, pleasing sensation she could not quite put a name to as she laughed.

"Oh no, Harold, I couldn't possibly survive one lunch without you," she said, but her tone was more playful than scornful, and he smiled at her gratefully.

He was oddly gentle with her for the rest of the day, offering to clean up after dinner and making her camomile tea before bed. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought that her feminist sentiments should be riled about this, but it was _nice, _so nice, being looked after just for a little, that she did not complain, but only smiled and took Harold's hand in hers, giving it a gentle squeeze, after he climbed into bed.

She would go to Susan tomorrow, she thought, dimly, as Harold turned the lamp off. Susan was probably less likely than even she was to go to church, so it would be a fairly safe assumption that she should be home before noon. Se would go to Susan and explain exactly what she and Harold were planning, and then she could start discussing suburbs, perhaps, that her niece could move into.

Kilburn, perhaps; it was in the area, but it was further out from the city and was thus likely to be more affordable. Or, failing that, Putney was quite a charming area; completely in the opposite direction, but Harold had grown up there, and it was a very forward and progressive area. She should not mind visiting family there.

_Family. _

That was what Susan was, wasn't she? It was strange to think that, though, for what a strange, prickly young woman she was! (Here she shifted to rest on her left side, drawing her hand away from where it lay under the pillow in an attempt to prevent that aching numbness she so often awoke to). How stiff and brittle, and almost (here it felt like a family betrayal to admit it) _boring _Susan was.

And yet- she remembered that strange light in Susan's eyes when she was talking about Edmund's Turkish delight. Then there had been that strange light in her eyes, and the rapid change in her tone, when she had seen the painting.

_"Where did you _find_ that? - Aslan?" _

As though flooded by a pulse of electrons, Alberta sat bolt upright.

"Aslan_," _she whispered. Beside her, Harold shifted. "_Aslan." _

_"I haven't told you about Narnia- or Aslan, the great lion- Alberta!"_

There was something there, some frayed thread, and Alberta reached out to grasp it, but it fell between her fingers, splayed across to the cornices of the room, diffused through the walls.

_Aslan, _she thought, and felt, for the first time in over a week, that same jolt of purpose that she often felt before embarking on research for one of her articles. _Susan. _

And as the night flickered by, she sat upright in the still silent darkness until sleep arched its back, curled up against her, and gently shut her tired eyes.


	14. nerves in patterns on the screen

If anyone had asked Alberta Scrubb, she would not have called herself a dawdler. Dawdling was for the idle, the indecisive, it was a sign of weakness. She was a woman of strength of character; a thoroughly modern woman who revelled in the franchise that had been hard-won by her mother and the Pankhursts and their fellow women; with determination and talent she had worked her way up the journalism ranks from those dreary days of reporting births and deaths to writing opinion columns and editorials; she was a woman with drive, with focus.

And yet, as she stirred her tea, her resolve of late last night lay limper than milk pooled somewhere about her feet.

It just didn't make sense. Narnia and Aslan, words that somehow bound her son- her intelligent, logic-oriented, self-assured son- with Susan Pevensie- what on earth did they signify? (For what they 'meant' must be a silly question, they were children's words, nonsense words- but even nonsense signified something.)

And then there was Susan; Susan, whom she could not easily categorise. She had once thought Susan too like Helen, too flighty and filled with giggles- yet the Susan of late reminded her (eerily and uncomfortably and oh how the thought stuck like pins in her gut) of- herself. Herself without the substance, of course, for Susan had as much admitted that she cared little for cultural landmarks or poetry or artwork- but even so, there had been something she had recognised in Susan, something more than a high, peaked forehead and dark handsome eyes. Something - somehow- similar.

Which of course meant that Alberta simply didn't know how to deal with her.

The sickeningly sugary smell of Turkish delight wafted through her brain and she wrinkled her nose.

Did Susan even know what she was doing?

"I'll meet with Mark now," said Harold's voice from somewhere behind her. She heard, rather than felt, the swift kiss he pressed to her hair.

She murmured a farewell somewhat absently, and she heard his footfall echo down the hall.

_Footfalls from the dining room swelled, halted by the door of her writing room. _

_"Bye, Alberta, I'm off now- Peter's just outside. Alberta?"_

And she saw herself, hunched at her table and peering at the paper- oh, what had she even been peering at? Some wretched column by Deveny?

She had murmured some sort of goodbye, she was sure- but had she even turned around? What sort of a mother was she?

"Wait!" she cried, pushing the chair back. It scraped loudly across the floor, but she bit back her wince. "Wait!"

Harold paused at the door, hat in hand, staring at her in confusion.

"Alberta-" he began, but her feet were already hurrying down the hall, and now she had reached him, right hand blindly grasping out to his. He took her hand with some confusion (and a part of her wondered at herself, for how odd she must look, face red, no doubt, and was that a tea stain seeping through her shirt?).

"Take care, Harold," she whispered, and his face softened as he opened his arms and held her briefly, tenderly.

"I'll be back for dinner," he murmured into her hair, and she nodded, clutching at him a moment longer before stepping back, looking aside.

In the mirror, she saw Harold put on his hat, slowly close the door (even as Eustace Clarence had closed the door, a thousand lifetimes ago).

I'm sorry, Eustace Clarence, she thought, breathing in and out. I'm sorry.

But when she opened her eyes, she saw only her own face, framed by the thin walnut panes and the pale cream wall behind. With a sigh, she looked down at her shirt, swallowed. It was time to clean up, and go call on Susan.

* * *

><p>Hamptons, she thought dully as she walked down the street. The cherry blossom beside her was beginning to bloom; the bare twigs looked to be weeping buds of white, tears cascading down frozen knobs of brown. She quickened her pace.<p>

It didn't make any sense. Why should she want to leave? When nothing was gone, why leave everything?

And then the scene with the boat- Narnia. Aslan.

And Eustace Clarence's words rung out, yet again-

_"I haven't told you about Aslan!"_

Aslan. Whatever it was, it had something to do with the Pevensies- of that she was certain. How could it not have something to do with them? But what? She grasped at the frayed threads and attempted to follow, but there were knots along the way, and she tripped and fell.

Eustace Clarence had known. She knew that now, knew it with a startling clarity (though the realisation itself was not new, perhaps she had known, had always known). Whatever it was, Eustace Clarence had known, and she had not listened to him.

All she could do now, as her feet carried her towards the brick pavement leading up to 24 Endsleigh Place, was hope that- somehow- her niece, Susan Pevensie, knew too.

She reached out and pressed the doorbell.

* * *

><p>The tea set which Susan carried out to the sitting room looked vaguely familiar, though Alberta could not quite remember where she had seen it. Likely it had been one of the rare times she had accepted Helen's invitation to tea (how Victor had had to pressure her to accept even one of those invitations! - dear Victor, and now his absence was the strongest, cruellest pressure of all).<p>

"Surely you would not have come so soon without a purpose?" asked Susan, and Alberta was intrigued and stunned in equal parts as to how Susan was capable of asking a question without placing a single inflection in her voice.

"Yes," she replied, and bit her lower lip momentarily.

_Biting your lip again, Bertha? Better make sure it doesn't fall off!_

"Harold-" she choked, paused, began again. "Harold has a friend in Hamptons. It is possible we may be able to open this house for tenants; financially this will enable you to afford a smaller apartment, and it is a safer- investment- than selling the place outright."

Never before had such formal discourse felt so ghastly impersonal. Victor's house, her childhood home, reduced to an investment! But she must plough on, for Susan was her niece, and her niece had asked for help, hadn't she? And she helped her nieces and nephews (heaven knew what she had put up with to help her nieces and nephews in the war).

And Susan was all that was left of Victor.

Susan's face remained impassive, but something flickered in her dark eyes.

"I am relieved," she said, eventually, "thank you, Aunt Alberta. Please thank Uncle Harold for me- and let me know what I can do to help."

_Relieved_. The word dusted her throat with bile.

"I will let Harold know," she said, picking up her tea and turning aside.

It was far easier to stare at the lamp than to stare at her niece. It was an interesting lead-light design; if nothing else, Helen had had a lovely, if painfully old fashioned, taste in furniture. And beside it was a box- a silver box, with a green ribbon half untied.

The box of Turkish delight.

_"It - it was Edmund's."_

Edmund Pevensie. Her son had been close with him, that serious, dark-haired boy with Victor's forehead, Victor's nose.

_Her son._

_"But Alberta, wait! I haven't told you about the great lion, I haven't told you about Aslan!"_

She put her teacup down.

"Susan," she said carefully, decisively. Susan put aside the cushion cover she had been folding.

But what should she say? How should she continue? For what was it? A thing? A person, an animal, a place?

The words spilled out of their own accord, rush of tumbling waterfall from unsure lips. "What do you know of Narnia?"

Susan froze, and even though they were not holding eye contact, Alberta could have sworn that her eyes widened, that a current of some sort flashed and changed her eyes so that she appeared to be gazing not at the carpet so much as through it. But what was her expression? Horror? (Longing?) Or mere surprise? - for the curtains had already shuttered in, and Susan was already standing to pour another cup of tea.

"Where did you hear that word, Aunt?" she asked airily, lightly, and if Alberta were not so sure that she had heard her son speak of it, had not remembered Susan's mention of the place, she would have begun to doubt herself.

Surely she had remembered it correctly? Her stomach twisted, scales of ice pressing with soft hiss- you tried to forget, you tried to forget. But she hadn't forgotten, she knew, she knew that she had heard it!

But then Susan's hand trembled as she picked up her tea cup, and Alberta _knew_ she was right, knew that Susan knew _something_.

"I was hoping you could tell me," she said evenly.

The teapot slipped from Susan's grasp and clashed against the cup. Tipping to the side, the cup rolled, its handle splintering and skittering to the edge of the table.

"Oh," said Susan, and the distress in her voice put its hand around Alberta's throat and _tugged_. "This was - Mother's favourite set."

Moving automatically to help pick up the broken handle, Alberta paused- and stopped. She knew where she recognised that cup, pale pink rose buds and fine gold edging down the sides; knew all too well, remembered that afternoon spent shopping for a present for Victor and his soon-to-be wife. She had bought it half in jest- though half in jest meant half in sincerity, and she had wished Victor and even Helen happiness in her heart, when the man had boxed the set up- and was not sure if Helen would like the gift. They had never gotten along.

But it had been her favourite set?

The tea Alberta had drunk swirled, uncomfortably warm, in her stomach. It was thick, and it burned and it smelt oddly like shame.

"I am sure it can be fixed," she said, as gently as she could manage.

Susan laughed hollowly.

"The crack will always show, you know it as well as I do," she said, lips tautly pulled in a mocking smile. "No, this can't go back to the cabinet."

A distant look crossed her eyes, and Alberta read a weariness that stretched beyond Susan's twenty-one years etched in her brow.

"No," she murmured again, half to herself, "it can't go back."

Alberta had a very strong suspicion that Susan was no longer merely talking about the teacup.

Gingerly, Susan picked up the handle of the cup and placed it inside the cup. Then she sat back down on the sofa, smoothed her uncrinkled skirt, placed her hands together on her knees, and looked at Aunt Alberta half expectantly.

It was altogether so bizarre as to render her momentarily speechless, and she gaped a moment at her niece (and who ever knew that Susan Pevensie could confuse her so?).

"Susan," she said eventually, but her words might as well have been addressed to a lamppost, for Susan stared past her as though she were merely an inanimate figure in an old mahogany frame.

"You asked me about Narnia," Susan said, her voice slightly strangled.

Instinctively, Alberta leaned closer.

Susan was staring straight ahead, her back stiff. For a moment it looked as though she might laugh, or perhaps cry, but it passed almost instantly, a breeze in summer twisting into stifling stillness.

"You asked me about Narnia," she repeated, still not looking at Alberta. Her voice was low and calm, or calmer than before, almost recitative-like, and Alberta fought to catch each word. "It was a game, a game we all played- Peter, Ed, Lucy and myself, that is- and it all began back in the War. We were children, see, and it was so hard being away from Mother, and Father, too- and then Lucy, I think it was Lucy- she pretended there was a country in a wardrobe. We called it Narnia. And inside Narnia-" for the first time, her composure shook a little, her voice quavered, and she took a pained breath. "Inside Narnia was Aslan, the Great Lion."

Alberta shifted to the edge of her seat.

"Tell me about Aslan," she said.

Susan leaned back in the chair, almost shrinking into the cushions as she bit her lip.

"I don't remember all of it, Aunt Alberta," she said, and her voice was as thin as a damp sheet of newspaper on a humid Sunday morning. She looked so young, Alberta realised, her shoulders slumped and her face filled with (desolation) anxiety. Eustace Clarence had not looked that young in years, even though he was- _had_ _been_, she reminded herself, and her heart lurched violently into her stomach- years younger than Susan.

"Sit up straight," she said, and the gentleness in her voice almost surprised her. "And keep your shoulders back."

Susan gave a choking laugh and sat up.

"There was a great lion," she said, and frowned. "He- he woke the land from an eternal winter. And his name was Aslan."

And as Susan stumbled her way through fragmented memories and tales, Alberta thought of the ship sitting in her living room.

_I'm listening, Eustace Clarence,_ she thought_, I'm listening._

* * *

><p><em>AN: I should be fined for being the most irresponsible writer ever. To people still following this story, I am so, so sorry. I do know where this story is going, the engine just keeps stalling :/ _


	15. coat embroidered with mythologies

"And afterwards, Edmund-" Susan halted, furrowed her brow. "Edmund changed after that."

"Changed?"

_"I fell into the painting… and I can't go back, Alberta, I can't." _

"What do you mean he changed?"

Susan raised her eyes to meet Alberta's, almost instantly falling to her lap.

"Well, we _say _he changed," she qualified. "Lucy, Peter and I say- _said_" - she took a short breath. "And Mother commented on it when we came back."

Her lower lip trembled and her eyes were flints of ice in the winter sun.

Victor had looked like that, too, Alberta realised with a strange start; when he had returned home from the war. He had been sitting in the drawing room, and Eustace Clarence had dropped a jar- probably one with his lollies- on his bedroom floor, and the sound had resounded through the house- and Victor had jumped like a frightened rabbit (one of those creatures he loved t point out at Hampstead Heath). And his eyes had gone so cold, so hard, just like Susan's (_just like the lights in the hospital)- _

"Susan," she said, and as she spoke she heard the tremble in her voice. "Susan!"

Susan blinked owlishly once, twice, gave a little start

"What were we- ? - oh, Edmund," she said, and frowned again. "Well, he was _nicer _after we left Professor Kirke's." THe lip biting resumed.

_Soon you'll have no lips left to bite. _

There, that was her mother's voice.

"Nicer?" she prompted, glancing (surreptitiously) at the clock behind Susan. She really ought to head soon, it would soon be four; already three bells had tolled, three tugs from home while still she sat _here_, hearing a half garbled story from a stern, half-grieving girl who seemed to have _forgotten _the story she was meant to be telling, who could not speak with any real ease, who _(is Victor's daughter) _and she didn't know her or like her, and, oh, but how cold Susan was! The living room felt like winter; autumn had already flown away (already died).

"- It was the war, you see; he grew up, as we all did." Susan smoothed her skirt out, gave Alberta a small, tight smile. "What point would there have been in being so cruel to each other when Father was at war and Mother was so far away?"

"But you said-" Alberta began, wishing she did not sound quite so stupid.

"Well, of course," Susan said, and that strange but familiar look of pained joy filled her face. "We were not always kind- but then, we were so lost, so lost. Put on your coat, darling, and take your lunch, Mother told us, and then we were at school, and we were whisked away on a train- and of course, Edmund was so young, and was missing Father so dreadfully. Is it any wonder he behaved poorly and needed to settle down?"

And yes, of course, it all made _sense, _so-

"- hence, Narnia."

"And Aslan."

"- Yes, and Aslan."

But there was something in Susan's voice, perhaps not even in her voice; perhaps it was in the silence before she spoke, as faint as a dropped stitch in a coarse handkerchief, or the edge of a canvas peeling away from the drying paint.

"You grew up," she said, and each word was so heavy it was an effort to speak. Yet something her wouldn't- _couldn't- _be still, and it burst forth, gasping for air as if it had been journeying in a dark, cloistered tunnel. "Susan, why was Edmund at the train station this month?"

Her voice caught, latched onto the splinters still in her throat (heart).

_Why was anyone near that train station? _

Susan gave an odd gasp as though she had forgotten how to breathe.

"He was there-" she began, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "He was there for Narnia."

Her eyes were wild and terrified

_(weave a circle round her thrice)_

_For Narnia. _

_"But Alberta… __I haven't told you about Narnia- or Aslan, the great lion- Alberta!"_

"I'm sorry, I really don't remember any more," said Susan tightly, though not crisply. She swept out of her seat and picked up the tea cups deftly. "Thank you for calling about the house, Aunt Alberta, and I'm sorry I couldn't help you more."

And with that she smiled, a tight, painful smile that Alberta was _sure _Victor would not have approved of, and led Alberta to the front door, feeling rather suspiciously as though she had been pre-emptively kicked out.

* * *

><p><em>For Narnia, <em>she thought, footfall quiet on the half-shadowed pavement. _For Narnia!_

It sounded like some foolish patriotic war call, like those recruiting posters "For England" and "For the nation"; those wretched posters she had seen as a child, from before her own father's conscription into that terror that had failed to 'end all wars'- _for England! _

But patriotism led to war, and oh, but how stupid it was to fight over a nation! She and Harold had been firm on this point, and she had tried to dissuade Victor from fighting.

_"Don't you remember Papa?" _she had hissed, flinging his army cap at him. _"Don't you remember how broken our mother was, how hard its as for all of us?" _

The flash that had been in his eyes! She still remembered, still _felt _it.

_"He was conscripted, Bertha-" _

_"- And you are _choosing _this?" _

_(and how the pain and betrayal had swirled, ugly, senseless strokes slapping scars on half-marked white) _

_"- that war was different. This time it's-" _

_"It's what? Just? I never thought I'd see the day! My brother, a killer! My brother- a murderer!" _

How he had drawn himself up, then, till the ceiling seemed barely heigh enough to contain him! She still remembered, or at least in her memory it had seemed as though the fire had burned lower, and she remembered feeling so _small, _so very young, had felt their three year age gap more pertinently then than in the years that he had been married with Peter, Susan, even Edmund, and she had felt somehow left behind.

_"And what of the Edelsteins, the Kacelniks? Alberta, they were your friends, too, and you know- you _know _their fears for their families! Can I not fight for them?" _

What had she done next? She felt the thread, grasped it, and it fell between her fingers with the breeze.

_Remember, remember, what else is there to remember? _

"Senseless," she whispered, and somehow she recalled that word- had she shouted it, or had he? One of them had, she knew, and how ironic that the only fragment she could grasp from the years floating past was that one word, _senseless, _that slid through her fingers like liquid.

But that word, it had been central to that conversation, ahdn't it? _Senseless. _

_"War is, senseless, Bertha." _

Or had it been, _"Death is senseless?" _

Did it even matter which it had been?

But Victor's response,there had been _something _about Victor's response! What had he said?

_"I can't sit by doing nothing?" _Oh, but had there been something about Christ coming and setting things right? Or _"Christ has no hands but his church?" _(she was sure the last one was a quotation, but couldn't for the life of her remember where it had come from).

But why did it matter, what Victor had said? He had had his rationale, and she did not buy it, have never bought it, and they had discussed it before, so why was it bothering her now? And, in any case, why was it making her think so of -

But no, she was being silly. The _lion, _Aslan? Heavens, and it wasn't even a real lion!

She checked her watch; heavens, was it really that time? Briskly, she picked up her pace; if she dawdled any longer, it would be very nearly six! It was time now to file away her thoughts for another day, to wrap them up and place them on the shelf, and leave them behind with the used tea cups. Pausing only a moment to breathe in the hedge roses in a nearby terrace, she trained her eyes ahead, and made her way home.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Oh my dear. I have no excuse... And this is not even edited so it probably has a dozen or more mistakes in it, but I just feel so bad about how I haven't written anything for this story in an age that I just needed to get SOMETHING up. To borrow something I saw someone writer on tumblr, writing is like the alethiometer and I am like Lyra, and the older I get, I can't, I can't :( _

_The quotation, if anyone was interested, is from a prayer/poem written by St Teresa of Avila, to whom George Eliot writes a somewhat touching homage in Middlemarch. _


	16. a journey, and such a long journey

"I've cooked dinner," said Harold, with a shy, crooked smile when she (finally) opened the door.

"Thank you, Harold," she said.

The words tasted odd in her mouth, like the thickened balls one put in one's wardrobe to keep the moths away from the coats. Why _should _she thank him for cooking dinner?

And yet she felt, somehow, that it _ought _to be said. Perhaps it was because Eustace Clarence would always say _thank you for cooking_, and she and Harold were so used to hearing it. That must be it, a matter of habit.

But when she looked up, there was a small glow in Harold's eyes, and something in her softened.

"What did you prepare?" she asked, so gently she half surprised herself.

"Couscous- with the last of the capsicum."

He looked so proud, standing there with the tea towel still curled around his left hand, _so _like Eustace Clarence (when he had pinned his first butterfly, traced out his first diagram of a simple circuit). It was as though a hand thrust itself into her back and twisted, as one would wind a clock.

She burst into tears.

"What, Alberta- it's all right," she heard him say distantly, worriedly, felt his arms slowly rubbing her own. "It's not gummy or dry, I tested it- you don't need to worry about last time-"

And how, how _very _like Harold to completely misunderstand her! How like a man!

(But then, that wasn't true, not entirely. And she was tired- _tired-_ of the bitterness that crept in after those thoughts, cyanide vines seeping and withering into her bones.)

"It's all right," she said instead, briskly fishing out her handkerchief. It would have been so much more effective and efficient if a suspiciously mucus-like substance had chosen not to drip from her face to her sleeve. "And- I wasn't thinking about your last couscous salad."

(It had been amusing, Harold's first attempt at cooking couscous. She had of course been angry at the time- supplies had not been particularly high then, and he had wasted a perfectly good amount of the semolina by soaking it in boiling water. Dinner had been so dreadfully gluggy that, in the end, they had ended up having pears and tea for dinner. Eustace Clarence had thrown a sulk, and Harold had not entered the kitchen for three months.)

Hesitant relief filled Harold's face, and she smiled at him (how wan her smile must look).

"Well," he said, twisting the tea towel around his other arm, "shall we eat, then?"

"I spoke with Mark- about the lease," said Harold, after they had sat down. "He says it should be fine; apparently Frances Partridge has been making some enquiries to the firm as to a place in London, though it doesn't seem that she and Ralph have any intention of _selling _Ham Spray just yet. And- well, being in Bloomsbury…"

"Of course," said Alberta, taking up her cup and forcing down a sip. "Ideal, naturally."

Why was her water shaking?

Belatedly, she realised it was her hand, and she quickly placed the cup back on the table.

"Susan says thank you," she added, as the water slashed its way down her throat.

He moved forwards in his chair, peered at her.

"Alberta," he began slowly, and she bit her lip. "Alberta, what happened?"

"I don't _know_ what happened," she snapped caustically. "Am I supposed to be able to describe everything to you, Harold?"

He looked somewhat taken aback, and she felt a flush of triumph.

"I only asked because- oh damn it, Alberta, I just wanted to know how you are."

He eyed her plate, stabbed some more capsicum onto her couscous.

_Would you like some vegetables with that knife? _

"Well, I don't _know,_" she snapped, disliking how petulant her words sounded. "_Thank _you, Harold."

He looked at her coolly.

"There's no need to take that tone, I only wanted to see if I can help," he said edgily.

"I have lost my brother and my son to a wayward train. Unless you can change _that _then you probably can't," she bit out.

Harold looked as though he had been struck. His mouth opened, shut, and he swallowed, his face bloating red then draining of all colour.

"You don't own grief, Alberta," was all he said.

The scrape of fork against cold ceramic plate formed uneven stitches in fraying air.

_You don't own grief! _

What a thing to _say_! As if grief was something to be _owned, _something that she _wanted_! As if she wanted that horrible ache that throbbed constantly, pulsed whenever she passed Eustace Clarence's room, saw that wretched painting, visited Susan, thought of the _dear Jills; _as if she wanted that!

And she _did _know that Harold was hurting! (Even if he was always the one to reach out to her, the one to ask if-)

She stabbed a piece of capsicum rather fiercely and it clattered off her plate. As she picked it up, she glanced over at Harold, her mouth already open-

- but something in his face had changed in the past few moments. It was almost like one of Mama's unfinished drawn-work patterns that she and Victor had divvied up all those years ago; a subtle loosening of the thread here, a gap there, and something lurking in the nothingness _here here I am here. _

The triumph turned sour in her stomach and the shame settled like a heavy shroud about her throat. Her words echoed in her ears- childish, petulant, _cruel. _

Something burned against her skin, and she had the oddest vision (and that in itself was odd, because visions and imaginings were Victor's thing, not hers). Yet it was as though she was standing atop a tall mountain- and all she could see was _herself _and a darkness, like clouds before a storm, gathering beneath. She tried to look upwards, or across, but her gaze was fixed, and she could see nothing except the clouds rushing up to meet her, and _herself _falling- half hidden in cloud- now shrouded in shade.

_You don't own grief. _

"I should not have said that," Harold's voice said, cutting into her thoughts, and suddenly the mountain and the clouds and darkness dispersed, and she was still holding her fork, unmoving.

"No," she said slowly, "maybe not the way you said it. But I think-" _(and she didn't want to say the words to realise them and realise their truth she didn't want to say didn't)- _she swallowed. "I think I needed to hear them."

Her neck felt heavy, but she felt she should look at Harold, and so she raised her head _(slowly slowly) _to meet his gaze. There was something warm and different in his eyes. Relief? (Pride?)

And the unspoken words threaded the air with a palpable pulse, and Harold smiled gently at her, gesturing the corner of his mouth until she wiped away the stray food, and she felt something oddly like peace nestle against her.

* * *

><p><em>AN: I initially joined this chapter to the next one but it just didn't work. Next chapter should be up tomorrow or so; if they're better off joined together, just say so in the review. Not that I live upon them, but reviews would be appreciated J _


	17. something left that was more

They did not speak until it was time to sleep and they had exhausted the natural rhythm of changing into bedclothes, slipping beneath the covers, turning the light off.

"I ran into Samuel MacPherson," Harold said suddenly, his voice cutting into the gentle darkness. "From the church," he added.

_MacPherson. _

Alberta shifted to face him, though in the darkness she could only make out the barest outline of his face.

"Millicent's husband?" she asked.

_Nevertheless, I shall be praying for you. _

"Apparently they live in the Camden Town, in the same block as Mark," Harold said conversationally _(and not really answering her question). _

"Millicent MacPherson, from Holy Cross Church?" she prodded again.

She felt, rather than heard, Harold shift.

"What other church have we been to in the recent past, Alberta?" he said, half jokingly, but she heard the deafening emptiness beneath, saw the unfinished drawn-work. "Nice man, for all his oddities. Says that Millicent is still thinking of you, praying for you."

"I don't need prayers," said Alberta automatically, but without vitriol.

"No," Harold agreed, "but it's- nice, I suppose; we don't even know them. It must be their way of caring."

_Their way of caring. _

Alberta had not, in all honesty, considered prayer in any such light. She had always been offended when Victor had tried to pray for her, angry whenever she had seen Eustace Clarence on his knees. It seemed so- so- _subjugating _(she could not really think of another word)- and to what, for what?

_Their way of caring. _

"That's- nice," she said, and once the words rang in the air she was surprised to realise that she actually meant them.

Harold reached out, let his arm fall gently across her left shoulder. She shifted closer, feeling an echo of distant years rustle away, fade into the outside. She'd forgotten how well she fitted against Harold, how right it felt to hide her face in the crook of his neck. Or perhaps she hadn't forgotten, perhaps she was just re-remembering. She breathed in deeply.

"He said that we could visit them for tea, any day except Wednesdays or Fridays," he murmured into her hair. "I declined, but the offer is still open and I have their number. I thought, since I'm back at work this week-"

"Harold," Alberta said, pulling back. "Why are you _still _talking about the MacPhersons?"

He let out a surprised laugh and- _nuzzled her ear with his nose. _

"You don't need to be infantile," she said, but he only laughed and kept laughing until she pulled her face away to tell him off, and he leaned over and kissed her as his arms found their way around her back.

(They did not talk about the MacPhersons.)

* * *

><p>The morning was a strange light thrown upon a building, the clarity of walking out to the open after hours spent gazing at Matisse, and Alberta realised, when she awoke to an empty space beside her and a short note from Harold explaining that he had gone to work, that somewhere, somehow- time had passed.<p>

And time _had _passed; she realised with a sudden jolt that, if Eustace Clarence were here, he _wouldn't _be _here, _because school had started once more. He would be in science, perhaps, copying more diagrams of transistors, or in mathematics (or writing letters to that Pole girl). His schoolmates would also be in class now- really would be in class, she realised, picking up her watch. In fact, his schoolmates _were _in class now- and wasn't that just the oddest feeling?

And Harold was at work.

It felt so strange to think of it. Did Harold really have to _work_? She knew that he worked, of course, and that he was teaching a course with the London School of Economics, and it had felt so natural before- well, _before. _But now, now it just seemed strange, unreal (cruel).

_It is as if we pay to breathe, _hadn't she written that derisively in one of her columns?

Oh, yes.

Her columns.

Well, time had passed, and she could not afford to miss another edition (well, technically, perhaps, she could, but it only took a few weeks before her absence would not be missed). She would need to contact Harry; would need to write up an article for next week's paper.

He had contacted her once he heard about Eustace Clarence, had given his condolences- and like that poor young constable, he had sounded sincerely sorry- but what else was there to say? And he had only said that she need not write a column for that week's paper - she knew this was kind, given the late notice, but it had not allowed her to feel anything, she had barely been able to express thanks.

No, she would need to contact Harry, and then she would need to get started on another column (and what on earth she was going to write on she had no idea); and _gracious _but the time!- and she thought so much she felt she did not think at all as she hurriedly changed into passable day clothes and tied up her hair.

* * *

><p>She realised, as the doors began to shut and the engine emitted that particular noise before it began its forward thrust, that she was <em>on a train. <em>

She tried to brush the thought aside, but there was a tightness in her chest, and the sound of the train on the tracks was shrill in her head. She clamped her hand over her nose. _Breathe breathe breathe. _

"Are you all right, Ma'am?"

She opened her eyes, tried to breathe, saw a youngish woman standing up and gesturing to a seat.

"Thank you," she murmured, and sat down.

_Mrs Scrubb, Ma'am, I think it might be best if you took a seat. _

_There's been a train accident with the British Railways. _

_- we were whisked away on a train – _

She closed her eyes, pressed her palms against her lids.

_Susan, why was Edmund at the train station this month? (Why was anyone near that train station?) _

"He was there for Narnia," she whispered, tiny dots dancing in her vision as she stared at the window opposite.

And there, a strand- she grasped at it, and she almost had it- or _something- _

- but then the train arrived at Canary Wharf, and she grabbed her things in a bundle and half ran out of the tunnel and its busy darkness, pushing against people here and there until she breathed the fresh air.

By the time she was standing in the sun, it was falling away- _something, _there had been _something_- but really, she thought, glancing at her watch, she should go and speak with Harry. There was always time to think later.

Plenty of time, since she would _not _be taking the train back.

* * *

><p>"I- haven't written for my column," she said, awkwardly, as Harry eased himself into his chair. He glanced up at her, surprised.<p>

"We didn't expect you to, Alberta," he said, half briskly and half gently. "It's all right, you needn't have bothered yourself with the journey here, the Underground is somewhat frightful these days."

She tried not to blanch, but he must have seen her face, for a horrified look crossed his own.

"I mean- oh damn it all. I'm sorry, Alberta."

"It's all right," she said, trying to smile. (At least her lips weren't numb.) "Easy slip."

He cleared his throat.

"Er, yes. Well- take your time, Alberta, there's no real hurry for you to turn in an article anytime soon."

There was something odd about the way he was speaking, and Alberta could not quite place her finger on it. On the one hand, surely what he was saying was comforting- she did not have to force herself to write, to find some topic that only vaguely interested her and pretend that it meant much more than it did- but-

"Are you sure, Harry?" she asked, testing each word. (Are. Are, you. Ewe. You. Are you sure. Sure. Shore. Shore, a shoal- _upon this bank and shoal of time, we'd jump the life to come. _Shoal. Shore. Sure.)

"Absolutely," said Harry, picking up a pen and twirling it briefly. "You know, there's a fellow who's been sending in a few letters this past year- given himself the name "Cassandra", which is a little bizarre, but it works. I published one of the letters last week and response has been good; I'm happy to run his letters as long as you need some time."

How perfectly comforting.

"I- thank you," said Alberta coolly.

Perhaps Harry heard the resentment coiling its way across the desk, or perhaps he saw it splayed across her face. She hoped that he felt its punctures somewhere. In any case, he added quickly (though not quickly enough),

"We'll always keep a column for you, Alberta. You've been a solid contributor. Everyone- the team- is keeping you in our thoughts and prayers."

"Thank you," she said flatly. "I suppose I have taken up enough of your time. I'll be off, then."

"Not a problem, Alberta," he said, standing up. "And I mean it, we really are thinking of you around here."

She heard the sincerity in his voice, although it did not ease the burn of being _cast aside_ by a man who wrote under the pseudonym of "Cassandra" (and who _did _that?).

"Thank you," she repeated, unable to quite erase the edge in her voice. "Well, good day, Harry."

"Good day to you, Alberta."

She didn't care to look back as she left the office, but she doubted that he would look at her or try to speak to her, anyway. It was the way Harry worked; she supposed it was the mind of a male editor.

_So bitter, Bertha? _

But Victor wouldn't understand, had never been able to understand. He was a man in a man's world, a respected professor at the University College London; and even if he had supported the female franchise and Alberta's own decision to enter the workforce, he was a man, and it was _different _although it oughtn't be; different in a way that galled her, as much as she tried to overlook questions of difference by pretending they didn't exist.

_"So I shouldn't treat girls any differently? No matter what Uncle Victor says?"_

_Eustace Clarence, peering up at her. _

_"Don't suck your thumb, Eustace Clarence, it's unbecoming. And no; girls are the same as boys, to treat them any differently is degrading." Smoothing out his shirt. "There, now. You're ready for school."_

Ready for school! Ready for nothing. Ready to be relegated to the side, without a job- oh, a _held _position, but how long were positions in newspapers really _held_? She was dispensable, no matter what Harry had said, and it seemed he had already found a replacement. Cassandra would be usurping Cassiopeia's position.

_At least Cassiopeia lived, _she thought with sudden vindictive relish.

_(I am still alive.) _

* * *

><p><em>AN: Well! There you have it; the choppiest chapter in this entire story. Should it be merged with the previous chapter, or smoothed out? Or is it all right as it is? I really don't know. (The more I write, the more I realise that I don't know, and the more thankful I am to know that God is the perfect author who knows exactly where His story is headed!)  
><em>

_Hang on, folks, the end is (semi) in sight now :)  
><em>


	18. infirm glory of the positive hour

_I am still alive. I am still alive._

The words thrummed, unintelligible, in her ears, a strange instrument she did not know. Like a pounding headache, they thrust things aside-

"_- the Bardeen and Brattan-" _

_I am still alive. I am still alive. _

_I am still alive. _

But of course she was. So why did it feel as though she had been frozen, lifeless statue in a busy courtyard, while Eustace Clarence and Victor, even Helen and Lucy and Peter and Edmund, hurried by? Why was it only now that she breathed and felt it, looked at her hands and saw colour (_rusty iron red- no no no)_, opened her door and felt the air relax, move?

Breathlessly, she took off her hat.

Then it all came back, sudden and so unstartling in its familiarity, sinking her stomach and weighing, stone-like, on her brittle frame.

_I am alive. _

(And they are not.)

She knew with remote clarity that she was not the only person to feel this way, was not the only mother to have lost a son, the only sister to have lost a brother; she knew, but it was a knowing like the colour of the rain, like the sound of a daffodil or the taste of ice. Granny May, she thought, leaning against the wall, there is Granny May. Old Mrs Swire, who lost her child to the Spanish flu and her husband to a motor accident; even people she didn't know - the Millicent MacPhersons of England. Mrs Pole.

Frowning, she stood up, blinked.

Mrs Pole.

Strange how she had not thought of that women. Jill Pole had a mother, this she knew; she recalled with dreadful clarity that one, awkward conversation they had had on the front porch one summer while Eustace Clarence had gone in to talk with Harold; that silent feud over a shaded slur Alberta had cast on Jill (and what that had been over she could scarcely now remember). Jill had, she recalled, invoked her own mother's authority, and only Eustace Clarence's arrival had prevented what might have resulted in a rather shameful dispute (Alberta Scrubb, ex-home affairs journalist and long-term columnist for the Daily Mirror, picking a fight with a fifteen year-old girl?) - even now, her ears burned slightly at the memory, so indelibly scratched in her mind that even at the point of forgetfulness, it leapt back into frame.

No, Jill Pole had certainly had a mother. A sudden strange surge of (sympathy) for this nameless woman caught her, tugged piteously at her sleeve, for this unknown woman, whose daughter Alberta had never been personally fond of, whose daughter was not lying in a still-unmarked grave.

(And really, it had been over a week, why was it that the headstones had not come in yet? Tardiness, unforgivable tardiness.)

Mothers who watched their children die.

There was, if not an article, at least a column in that, but the thought was coated in an unpleasant taste of rotting leaves in an over-humid summer.

Leaves, now, that was right; she had a new pot of Ceylon in the kitchen, and she had barely had a cup this past week.

Resolutely, she stood up, and headed to the kitchen.

When she reached the kitchen, she noted the papers lying on the kitchen bench, right beside the kettle, and heaved a sigh. Harold had many strengths but one of his weaknesses was surely his disorganisation; lecturer at the London School of Economics he may be, but his personal administration was limited to bookkeeping.

The papers would go on the side, and the note would- peering closer, she noticed the date: _28/03. _Today, then.

_Off to work. MacPhersons - CAD2710. Shared line, apparently, but Samuel claims the neighbours are polite - Harold. _

Shared line? She wrinkled her nose. A shared line! Why- but then, of course, Millicent MacPherson had not had the attire of a wealthy woman, and the telephone was in high demand. But why on earth would a couple who was not that well off decide to invest in a telephone? And why was Harold so _insistent _that she call?

No, she had better things to do with her time.

_Especially when you're unemployed, _a voice sneered, and she promptly locked it up and threw it into cold storage.

The papers would have to be sorted- and heavens, but didn't Harold _fold? _Why, but the Daily Mirror was spread open-

Open at the page where her column _used _to be.

_Le Ray to Shine Brighter with Fiancee Ruth at His 'Elm_

Oh, goodness. Punning on actors' names, reporting on the engagements of debutantes and actors in such a tense political climate as _this_? She had known for a while that Harry was going soft, but _this _was a new low. Tea forgotten, she cast her gaze further down the page.

_It is a marvellous hard thing to please all people all the time, yet debutante Ruth Elms seems to certainly have mastered the act... _

_... If the British Prime Minister should insist pursuing his 'new colonialism' policies, perhaps the only measure that may allow him to better position himself for next year's election should be to follow Le Ray's footsteps and find a young Lady Elms of his own. I hear that Jean Simmons is still available. _

_CASSANDRA_

Oh.

_Oh. _

She glanced across at the note, at the newspaper, spread open at that page. Note, newspaper. Note, newspaper.

Snatching up the piece of paper, she marched down the hallway, half tore the receiver off the base.

_2-2-3-2-7-1-0. _

Did Harold think she had no _chance _to go back? Or was he merely worried for her, on her behalf, that she would react this way, knowing that Harry had so cheerfully shafted her for a man who combined political comment with cheap celebrity news? Should she be angry at him, or thankful to him? Or simply irritated? She was not that weak!

Memories of herself crying desperately assaulted her; she batted them away, focused on the shrill, jagged ringing of the telephone line. One ring, another, another, another. Hopefully the telephone was not off-hook; ideally, it would be.

_Click. _

"- Hello, this is Millicent MacPherson speaking."

"Oh, hello," Alberta said, and wondered exactly what she should say next. Her excuse sounded rather stupid in her head. "This is Alberta Scrubb. I don't know if you remember me..."

"Hello, Alberta," that same, mild voice replied, with the warmth of basic recognition. "May I call you Alberta?"

"I- yes," said Alberta, unable to keep from waspishly adding, "What else would you call me?"

From the other end came a small laugh. "I always feel safer to check."

The silence crackled across the wires. Alberta eyed the telegraph poles through the adjacent sitting room windows, remembering suddenly (somewhat absurdly) the short, wire fences that had lined the streets, before the war, before the Pevensies had stayed in her house, _(before Narnia). _

"I called because Harold-"

"I assume Samuel-"

Simultaneously, they stopped, Alberta chewing her lip and staring at the painting she still had not- could not- removed from the wall. She began to count the crackles over the line.

"I am glad that you have called," said Millicent presently, and Alberta wondered whether she would be able to better ascertain the woman's emotions if they were face to face. _Glad _was not exactly the tone pervading this call. "I was wondering how you were."

"Alive," said Alberta, unable to contain the soaking, tearing bitterness. "I am still alive."

"It can be awful, can't it?" Millicent said, her voice dry, and her answer was so very unexpected, so real, that Alberta laughed.

"Yes, I hate it," she admitted, and heard her voice rise in that awful indicator that she was about to start to cry. "I hate-"

_Click!_

"Oh, Milly, is that you? Oh-"

_Click!_

"That's Donna, I am so sorry," Millicent said, and Alberta felt, rather than heard, that she really was sorry. "She probably needs someone to watch over Michael tonight. You were saying?"

There were words inside, feelings and faces, and Alberta tried to reach out, drag them to the surface, but they slipped away and faded into the beige hall walls, into the neat patterned rug, the still muggy air.

"Alberta?"

"I feel like a failure," she whispered suddenly, and each word scratched raw her weather-beaten throat with its aching truth. "I can't-"

The phone clicked once, twice.

She couldn't continue.

In the silence that followed, Alberta wondered whether she had doubled the electricity bill for the month.

When Millicent finally spoke, her voice was gentle, even through the receiver.

"Why don't you come for tea tomorrow, Alberta?"

"I-" it was on the verge of her tongue to mention her work.

Perhaps it was having as much as work as Van Gogh, in his later years, had had a left ear. Perhaps it was the _loneliness _and boredom of being at home while Harold was off delivering a paper- likely his critique of Hayek's theory of financial regulation. Perhaps it was that Millicent hadn't worded her question "how are you" in those particular words, or as any other trite, hurtful statement. Perhaps- and, oh, but it felt silly to say- perhaps it was because she felt, instinctively, that Millicent was somehow _kinder- _kind, in the way Victor could be, when not teasing her; kind in the way that Helen, for all her irritating foolish fancies had been; kind, in the way that Eustace Clarence had, in his later years been. And even if she hadn't always liked that about Eustace Clarence, it had been so _very _much a part of him, particularly in his later years; that kindness that stabbed and warmed and angered her, and somehow, feeling that kindness, hearing it, made it feel as though, somewhere, somehow, he might still be _alive. _

"I would love to come."

In the buzzing silence, it did not feel like steel and ice and wire, but something softer, something like the haze of a Rothko multiform, pulse of invisible, glowing thread.

"I will see you at 11," said Millicent, gently. "And Alberta?"

"Yes?"

"We are all of us failures, some way or another. But it's not who we are, it doesn't have to be who we are. And you did not fail Eustace Clarence."

Long after the last _click, _Alberta stayed, holding the receiver.

"Number please?" came a clipped voice, with the hint of a Manchester accent.

She quickly hung up.

_We are all of us failures, some way or another. _

Glancing upwards, she saw again the crudely painted boat, the chunky, kitsch three-dimensional-esque wave. The dragon head looked directly at her, its purple sails billowing in the imaginary wind, its carved eyes staring, staring.

_It doesn't have to be who we are. _

Unbidden, (thankfully silently), words came to her with startling clarity: _I think, Victor, Eustace Clarence, that I may be going on a journey. _

"Foolish old woman," she murmured, but the words were as hollow as the dragon boat was real, and she smiled ruefully, headed to the kitchen, and began to boil the tea.

* * *

><p><em>AN: By the late 1940s, direct calls could be made within short distances, though telephones were something of a luxury and many families did use a shared line. The first three numbers correspond to a letter code, for the area. The MacPhersons live in Camden Town, but since this is alphabetically the third CAM district in London, I assumed that their area code would be CAD (2-2-3). _

_To anyone who watches The Hour, I am totally aware it happened in the late 50s and not the 40s, and I'm also aware it's not the best show out there (although Lix Storm is *perfection*), but hey... it's possible to pun on Le Ray and Elms. And that show is something of a guilty pleasure. _

_I have 4 more chapters planned... here's hoping I can get it all out before the year ends!_

_Happy Advent, all! _


	19. the crack in the teacup

The fog was a veritable swirl of grease at half past nine when she left the house. Harold had already left to deliver his lecture, having tucked a small message near her hat (she did not know when precisely he had started these silly yet strangely pleasant little mannerisms).

Faces blended into greying fog as she passed the Fleet River, saw the vaguely dark outlines of what must be the Heath in the background, as she slowly strolled into Bayham Street.

Rather belatedly, and more than a little stupidly, she realised that she had forgotten to ask Millicent what her actual address was, which number, and she was left standing in the almost tangible fog, staring at identical house after identical house, for moments that bled into car horns and the sounds of people on the streets.

And what had she come here for, after all? To see figures come and go, to settle down at tea and chatter about carrots and jobs (or, rather, a lack thereof), to form a childless mothers group? (She tried to ignore the self-inflicted stab wound that grated and tore at her stomach at that thought.)

In that instant, something slipped past her arm (a breeze? A leaf?), and she felt it, heard it- that strange, incandescent thread that pulsed, that was somehow tied to that wretched painting, that she remembered from Eustace Clarence (even, yes, even in their disagreements and their fights, and she remembered that wretched morning after she had put up Guernica in the sitting room). She remembered Susan, and that visit, and her strange, strange story with all its pauses and halts, its cloistered and cloistering silences.

And why should Millicent MacPherson have any clue?

(But, surely, she might know better than Alberta?)

Yes, she would ask, Alberta decided; she would be firm, she would be direct, she would ask. A car horn blared beside her, and inside she heard the ringing of a telephone. Each sound was so purposeful, so bold; she, too, would be bold.

Yet, as the seconds (hours) slunk by and slumped into the hedges, the thread began to slip, and she had to reach out, grasp again, and reach out, grasp.

_Narnia, _she thought, _Susan. Eustace Clarence. Narnia. Aslan. Narnia. Susan. Eustace Clarence. Aslan. Narnia-_

"Alberta?"

Now, how nice it would be if that was what would happen, that somehow Millicent MacPherson would recognise her, would come out and invite her in. It would mean that walking over had not been such a dreadful waste of her own time, and that she would not have to return home and try to pretend that she had done something moderately useful! Now, if -

"Alberta Scrubb, is that you?"

She blinked, turned to the vague direction of the voice (rather vague it was, for directional hearing had never been her strong point). A woman was standing in a rather plain grey coat, with a decidedly ugly wide-brimmed, rounded plum hat, and as Alberta peered more closely yet, she recognised the woman, vaguely, as being Millicent MacPherson.

"Hello?" she ventured.

"Oh, good, it is you; I was so apprehensive this morning when I realised that I had forgotten to tell you my address!" the woman chattered, extending a gloved hand to Alberta. "The house is this way; do come in, out of this dreadful fog!"

In the blinding haze that arched its back, Alberta felt oddly like a blind woman being led to the doorsteps, as Millicent guided her past this lamppost, past that telegraph pole, up a set of stairs _("Oh, careful, this third one is a little uneven"), _and into a smallish hallway.

"I am so dreadfully sorry about the weather," Millicent was saying, as Alberta removed her now yellow, soiled hat. "I would have offered to drive, but Samuel shares his car with his brother, and Michael was off to Essex this week- are you quite all right?"

Glancing ruefully at her hat, Alberta hesitated momentarily. Thankfully, Millicent had either not noticed, or she simply chose not to notice, for she was already walking down the hallway, turning on the light to her quaint, if unimaginative, sitting room.

"I have something to ask," said Alberta abruptly, the moment that her slacks reached the cushion.

Millicent looked vaguely unnerved as she took her seat opposite Alberta.

_I suppose this is not how you thought the day would go at all, _a vindictively relished voice whispered, _I have upset your plans._

But Alberta knew better than to relish in this completely irrational glory; relishing in one's satisfaction meant one might miss the bigger question, might provide the weaker, less publishable journal article.

"Have you ever heard of Narnia, or Aslan?"

"I-" Millicent looked clearly taken aback. "I- no, I don't- not that I recall. Why do you ask?"

Trying to ignore the sinking shame (_disappointment_) in her throat, and the throb that thrummed against her forehead and in her ears, Alberta paused. _("Remember, they may not give all to you on your first attempt; ask, ask differently, ask, and ask, until you have a satisfying response!")_

"My nephews and niece also attended your church, I believe- Peter and Edmund Pevensie, and Lucy Pevensie?"

Millicent's brow cleared, her eyes brightened.

"Yes, the Pevensies were wonderful. Lucy, in particular, was such a darling; she would often trail me, offer to help out with Sunday School and taking care of the children during the Mother's Sewing Circle- they were your nephews and niece?"

"Yes," said Alberta, trying to avoid the lump in her throat, to block out the image of the coffins and the portraits being removed from the whitewashed walls. "They were my brother's children."

_Victor._

_("Alberta, the story! You cannot afford to follow a personal line at the cost of the main point!")_

She cleared her throat.

"I believe that my son, Eustace Clarence, created a story- or some adventure- with his cousins, and that- a Jill Pole may have been involved. And-"

"And?" asked Millicent, clearly uncomfortable. "A story-"

"They believed it was true," said Alberta, flatly. Millicent peered at her, confused. "It had something to do with a place called Narnia."

* * *

><p>"I suppose that the Lord spoke to Balaam through his donkey," said Millicent, dubiously, when Alberta finished regaling her tale (if one could, in all honesty, call it a tale. Alberta had read better constructed stories in cheap women's magazines, much as she disliked the comparison.) Not knowing who Balaam was, and still somewhat embarrassed by the foolishness of what she had just said, Alberta stayed quiet. She was sure that the tips of her ears were burning.<p>

"Alberta." Millicent reached across the table and hesitated, her hand awkwardly hovering an inch above Alberta's. "I- I don't mean to imply anything about Eustace Clarence. He was a wonderful young man, and a most sincere and mature Christian. It is simply- there are so many things I do not know, and can never know. Perhaps The Lord did use this- Narnia- to lead your son to our Lord Jesus. But I don't know, I can't know."

And with that, the thread snapped, and Alberta felt as though she had run headlong into a wall of brick, that rocks had crumbled across something she had once thought an opening.

"I see," she said dully, unable to quite look at Millicent.

An uncomfortable silence descended on the table. She heard, rather than saw, Millicent reach for the milk jug.

"- Do you, though? See, that is?" Millicent asked abruptly, when the silence had grown so warm that Alberta half felt she was being forced outside the room. "Because I must confess that sometimes- often- I can't."

"If you can't see, then why do you believe?"

Unable to quite constrain the hysteria and disbelief from her voice, Alberta breathed in; out, in; out, half impatient to hear Millicent's response and more than half frustrated with her deferent answers. She watched Millicent (without eye contact of any sort), watched her shift to the left, to the right, reach out to grasp her cup.

"I believe because I believe that Jesus is who he said he was," she said, eventually, "- and because it is the only way I can understand and bear life."

Alberta snorted. "And what about some person who lived nearly two thousand years ago can make this bearable?"

As frustrated as she was by this entire visit, she was glad- truly, she was- that Millicent was not all that daft, that she didn't have to vocalise 'this' (Eustace Clarence. Victor. Dead dead dead), that she didn't have to say what still shredded her throat with its rusty red strokes.

Millicent sighed and pushed away her tea.

"I didn't, at first," she said, and her voice slowed to still moving ripples on the top of a quiet, lonely lake. "I wanted to hate God. I still He believed He existed; I couldn't not believe, whenever I saw the world, see- the stars, the seasons, people, I simply can't believe this happened without a god. But I didn't know if He was good." Her lips curled a little. "That's the worst part; believing in a god but not knowing if He's good."

Not believing in a god, Alberta kept silent.

She sighed, then, looked down. If she could slice through Millicent's mind, step behind her eyes, perhaps she could see the moving pictures which must be playing, vivid as the flicker of firelight, against the screen of her mind.

"What changed?" she wanted to ask, but it felt somehow rude to break the silence, and she sat there, watching the steam wisp and curl into the air as her tea inevitably cooled.

"It was one of the sermons, one of those awful Sundays when I didn't want to go to church, but Samuel took me along," Millicent continued abruptly, and it was as if there had never been any quiet; even the tendrils of smoke docilely sank back, seemingly collapsing inside their respective cups. "The Old Testament reading was from the book of Job. How I used to hate that book. Do you know it?"

Mutely, Alberta shook her head. The word 'Job' was as familiar to her as the taste of pork, and its mention was about as welcome; she must have encountered it somewhere, but its sharpness had long faded into a paleness that she happily cultivated. Job? She assumed it was a person, most Bible books tended to be. Or a place. It wasn't a particularly smart name for a place or a person, in her opinion, but those Bible people had been strange. But Millicent was speaking.

"- and Job loses everything in one day; wealth, property, his children, his health. Everything. And yet- God is there, He just doesn't speak. And Job spends the book crying out, crying out to God- and when God finally speaks, it is so strange, so very strange what He says. I'd never liked it, that strange book," Millicent was saying, raising her eyes to the non-plussed Alberta. "But then the preacher got up. I don't remember his name, but I remember his words, I remember them so clearly, it's as if he spoke them last week. For one thing- oh, it seems so obvious, but I hadn't thought it; he said, it was Satan who inflicted the suffering. God *allowed* it for a season, though he put limits in place, but it was Satan, not God, who caused the suffering. That- that was a little better."

In Alberta's opinion, it made about as much sense and provided about as much meaning and emotional comfort as Duchamp's infamous Fountain.

"- of course," Millicent said, after a pause, "I then thought, if God allows that suffering, does that mean He is not powerful to stop it? Or worse, does He allow it- because He isn't good?" She paused, laughed a little. "I tried to stop going to church, but Samuel has a way of talking me around."

Alberta thought of Harold, of his strategically placed slips of paper and newspaper pages.

"Men seem to have a penchant for that," she said dryly. She thought she saw Millicent's lips quirk at the corner, and felt a little more warmly towards her, even if she had the strangest, most un-consoling beliefs. "And what happened when your husband talked you into going to church?"

Millicent waved her hand.

"A few of the usual; people saying horrible things about how suffering builds character, how they know-" she met Alberta's eyes for a moment, and Alberta was not sure whether or not to read a vague apology in them ("It is never easy for a mother to lose a son")- "and- well, Bible readings. Sermons. The Lord, at work."

If Alberta was able to notice, or note, her motions, she might have seen her slight shift forwards, an ever so slightly perceptible incline of her head.

"There was the passage in Revelations; that reminder that our God will wipe every tear from every eye. He is powerful to stop suffering, and that is His plan; it has always been His plan. And then we had young Father Bowyer speaking about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane; our Lord suffered, and He knows pain. And- and I realised- God knows." Millicent took a short, shaky breath, and Alberta saw (felt) the tears misting in her eyes. "God knows- really, really knows- what it is to lose a son, to lose His Son. And then- I saw, or realised- or remembered- I don't know which. But it became clear to me- that suffering is what happens because this world is broken; because this world would kill our own Lord- and in this world, Satan inflicts pain, inflicts suffering on suffering, and pain on pain; but He will bring it all to an end, and He will bring comfort. Comfort, comfort, my people, He says, and He will bring it, because He is faithful!"

Millicent paused, took a few ragged breaths.

"Of course," she added after a moment, a hint of rue in her voice, "I still have no living child, and I cannot help but be wildly jealous of every mother with a child older than seven hours." Something of the light that had somehow, sometime, lit her face faded, and her age seemed etched into each crease of each line. "My Lord is enough- He is so much more than enough- but still, it is something I struggle with every day." She raised her eyes to meet Alberta's. "I imagine that your struggle is different, though no less painful."

"I do not- comprehend all this," said Alberta, almost pitifully, and indeed there was something ringing strangely in her head, almost like the bells on a Sunday morning, or a repeated, magnified sound of Harold scuffing his cufflinks against a metal railing.

"Of course," said Millicent quickly; "oh- I've talked too much, I'm so sorry, Alberta-"

"I think- I will think on this," Alberta cut in, ears spinning and her head still ringing.

"Of course," said Millicent's voice, as Millicent's hand reached out and grasped hers, helped pull her up to a standing position. "And if- if you ever want to talk- well- you know where to find me. Or you are most welcome to Holy Cross-"

"Yes," said Alberta's voice, as Alberta reached for her hat. "I- I think that would be lovely."

"Good day, Alberta," floated Millicent's (hesitant) voice, and Alberta turned around hastily for a half wave as the door shut against the grey, swirling grease.

-  
><em>AN: Because Millicent kind of word vomits when the rubber hits the road, and it *is* a lot for Alberta to take in._

_Also, prolific apologies for the slow update! I had this and the next 2 chapters written and ready to go for over a week but I have been in Adelaide without access to a computer. Dying. Also I got embroiled in a fight with the computers at Adelaide airport where the internet was *so slow* that I couldn't even upload a document. *Dying*. The rest of the chapters will be up in a few hours, bar the final chapter, which is still in the works. So sorry._


	20. the winds must come from somewhere

She began pinning the paper to her wall, taking out the balls of string, as she had not done in the years since she had finished covering home affairs; before Cynthia had gone on to bigger and better things, before she had been forced out of frontline journalism by her pregnancy and Eustace Clarence's birth.

Susan's strange story about Narnia gave but a few clues; during the war, the Pevensies had started it, Edmund had changed. Growing up, no doubt, had something to do with it; and obviously, Susan had come to a logical conclusion that being separated from one's parents had likely been a factor- but journalists shouldn't take such things purely for granted, and something felt like a tiny buzz, whispering echoes of something else something else that meant she couldn't simply ignore Susan's declaration, _"Edmund changed"._

The painting, and Susan's strange reaction to it somehow implied that there was something to that story that was more than a tale- and then, also linked to the painting, Eustace Clarence-

_"I fell into the painting in the spare room with Lucy and Edmund."_

Lucy and Edmund, during the wartime; Eustace Clarence's change. The disposal of the lolly jar under his bed, the lack of pinned butterflies on his desk; the gradual disappearance of his entire beetle collection; the shredding of his old journal.

Eustace Clarence taking things up with that Jill girl, Eustace Clarence going to church. To the same church as Jill Pole, the same church as his Pevensie cousins (her nephews, her niece).

But it was so strange, _so _strange. Because what sort of fantasy world could affect such a change? But how could that place exist? It was absurd, it was so absurd! Even Millicent, with her strange Christian beliefs, which in themselves seemed so absurd; even she had been hesitant. Balaam's donkey, she had mentioned.

(_Balaam's donkey_; she made a quick note of that. The spelling and the phrase was so familiar, like an old tale she had once been friends or acquaintances with, who had long fallen to the wayside. It was likely somewhere in the Old Testament, but precisely where she would have to research later.)

Eustace Clarence and his changed views. That awful discussion over the breakfast table, following the bombing of Nagasaki, where he had tried to defend war- or, at least, had critiqued total Pacifism. Eustace Clarence and his strange obsession with George MacDonald. Eustace Clarence, copying out copious chunks of the Bible. Eustace Clarence, saying "_Thank you_" after each dinner, Eustace Clarence, almost calling her "Mother" on two separate occasions.

And all of that happened following Edmund and Lucy's stay, following his ridiculous stories about that ridiculous painting; all of it, linked to Edmund and Lucy; Susan's strange behaviour and her stories, and _"It was a game we all played... and then Lucy- I think it was Lucy- pretended she found a country in a wardrobe" - _it all came back to the Pevensies.

And it all came back to one particular story, with two particular names.

_"Aslan, the great lion- he awoke the world from an eternal winter."_

_"But Alberta, wait! - I haven't told you about Aslan!'_

_Aslan_, she wrote, and pinned the paper to the centre of the wall, threaded the string across from Edmund and Lucy and Eustace Clarence and the painting, and Susan- all of it, all of it centred upon those words. Aslan had been the focus of the story, according to Susan.

But then, Millicent had never even heard of the names, knew nothing of them. All of this pointed to its simply being a game, simply being something children played- and that made sense, it should just be that.

But Eustace Clarence didn't play silly games; he wasn't like that. Even if he had changed and she hadn't liked the way that he changed he had not totally lost his mind. Certainly he became more common following his cousins' stay, but he had not descended to complete commonality. And even if Susan tried to brush off Edmund's transformation- had not Eustace Clarence changed, too?

_It was real was it real _pulsed, faded, pulsed, faded through the room, a spell in the musty, cave-like room (and still the grease swirled and trickled against her window pane outside); _it was real was it real_ and _why_ was she even entertaining such thoughts?

She traced the thread with a finger, felt its coarse weave, its thin, brittle frame; taut here, loser there- she knotted it once again around the pin.

_Aslan_.

She followed one of the threads outwards; the painting. That wretched painting. Eustace Clarence's 'journey'. His transformation.

"Alberta?"

Almost toppling forward, Alberta half clutched the string and half spun around, almost upsetting the intricate network on the wall.

"Harold!" Right hand still on the string, her left hand clambered, unsteadily, for her writing desk. "When did you come in?"

Harold blinked at her from the doorway as though he was the one who was shocked.

"My last lecture was at four, Alberta. I stayed back at the office to write a few more questions, marked another essay- it's our usual time for dinner."

Brow crinkled, she glanced out the window. It was darkening, just a little- could it really be time for dinner? The clock said it was so, but the colours of the sky implied- and goodness, but did the clock really say it was dinner time? Had she spent so long in her room, at the wall?

"Alberta?"

Judging from the gradual crescendo of footfalls, she supposed that Harold was walking towards her.

"Alberta, what have you been doing?"

Half turning, she saw Harold lower his briefcase, stretch out a hand, trace the thread. In his eyes she could almost read the words reflected; Aslan Eustace Clarence's journey Edmund and Lucy's stay the painting Eustace Clarence's transformation Edmund's change Susan's story the painting Susan's reaction Aslan and round and round in a network of circular intersections and cross-sections and peripheries.

"Alberta."

Harold's voice was warm, concerned, condescending.

"Alberta, I'm glad that you're able to apply yourself, but- what is this?"

"I am not a little girl!" she spat, wrenching her right hand away from the wall, away from its proximity to Harold. "Do not _patronise_ me, Harold Andrew Scrubb!"

"I-" he looked vaguely taken aback, and Alberta felt the heat swell. "Look, Alberta- I've had a long day at work, I'm sorry- but- what is this?"

_Don't you know? _was on the tip of her tongue, when she realised that, maybe, Harold didn't know. Had she spoken about this with him before? She could scarcely recall. Thinking about it, yes; sometimes it seemed it had been all she had thought of, when she could think- when the looming, black emptiness that had once been Eustace Clarence was not pressing upon her such that breathing, let alone thinking, was near impossible- but had she spoken about it with Harold?

"Alberta?"

Something in her broke at that; something in his voice, perhaps, the way that he sounded so very broken. (She did not know when this had happened; that when he broke, she broke- it had not always been so, but it had been more and more the case ever since - well, ever since.)

_There is so much to say, _she said, or perhaps she wanted to say it; _I don't know where to begin._

_Aslan, _came the immediate reply, and it was almost as if it was something speaking in her own mind; _you could always start with that._

"Do you remember," she began, and stopped.

Outside the fog swirled once more, smoke and dust and oil. Double double toil and trouble.

"Eustace Clarence used to pin butterflies," she said abruptly (inside _why why why why, _sirens screeching and question marks flying).

"Er-" said Harold, and she ignored him.

"And he had that jar of lollies under his bed, the jar he thought we knew nothing of. And he used to be so ambitious, Harold- do you remember that?"

"Y-"

"I still remember that breakfast, after the news of Nagasaki came," she said, and took an oddly choking breath. "Do you remember that, Harold? How he behaved so strangely when _Guernica_ was in the sitting room?"

"I- Alberta-"

"Do you ever wonder at that, Harold?" she pressed, looking at him properly for the first time that night, seeing the confusion and the piercing blankness in his grey eyes. "Do you ever wonder why he changed?"

Harold shifted from one side to the other.

"Well, er- Alberta, you know boys at that age; people change, and-"

"No, they _don_'t!"

Her breathing was fast, shallow.

"Harold, people don't change that much; not _that_ much, not just in a normal 'growing up' process. Eustace Clarence became almost a different person, didn't you see, don't you remember?"

She didn't know when she had started crying, but she felt the tears on her face, heard the hitches in her voice, that godawful nasal quality that meant that she would need to use a handkerchief now.

"Harold, didn't you see what I saw, didn't you see our son?"

Blurred, she saw, rather than felt, Harold reach out, grasp her arms. She pulled away.

"Alberta, I'm sure it was just- just a phase. He was only a boy, Alberta-"

_"No!"_

Perhaps stamping her foot was too childish, but at this point, she didn't care.

"Harold, he wasn't just a boy, don't you see? He changed, he _changed_! And there was something, there is _something_, something I can't see- but it changed our son, and it's real- and Aslan and Narnia might just be stories, that painting might be a silly prop, but something is real - don't you _see_?"

"Alberta," Harold's voice whispered near her ear, frustratingly soothing. "Alberta, I'm sure you are tired; you have had a hard, long day, and Harry called me-"

"Maybe there is a god," she said bitterly, wrenching herself away.

_Maybe there is a god._

She had said it only to get a response from Harold-

_What, Alberta? Are you mad?_

_Or, perhaps, Church, are you out of your mind? Alberta, you hate churches!_

_Or- I thought we had decided that was all nonsense?_

But even now _could it be real is it real it is real _thrummed and spun and swelled in her head.

"Really?" said Harold, mildly. Maddeningly mildly. "Well, if it suits you, Alberta, then I'll support you in that- but are you sure?"

She could not quite explain the betrayal that sliced through her body like butter.

"If I go to church," she said, bitingly, and began again. "I think I will go to church."

"Well, if it helps you," said Harold, almost earnestly, "that's- well, it's something, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Alberta, dully. "It's something."

He looked at her queerly and tried to drop a kiss on her cheek. She ducked her face, and felt his lips collide with her temple.

"Well," he said, awkwardly, "I suppose it's time for dinner."

Wordlessly, Alberta left her room, walked downstairs, and dished out the leftover cous cous and roast vegetables from the night before, the web of names blaring like a beacon in her mind.

_Aslan Eustace Clarence Aslan Susan Aslan._

_Something. It is real. Something._


	21. the years that walk between

"Good morning," said the woman in grey with the orange scarf, handing her a little green book and two (_two_!) booklets. "Are you new to this church?"

"A visitor," stammered Alberta, still taken aback by the woman's bizarre choice in clothing colours. With her brown shoes, she vaguely resembled an unwashed, mouldy vegetable, minus its roots. "Thank you."

Slowly, she made her way to one of the pews in the left gallery. The enormous crucifix in the arch above that table (the altar?) was more than vaguely intimidating, and she glanced uncomfortably to the side, where the low, wooden rafters sloped in some side-colonnade to the main body of the church.

Although she knew that it was not the case, she could not help but feel that Argos and his hundred eyes would be less prying than the eyes of the parishioners around her. Technically, of course, it was a city church; even its exterior red bricks were not so different from some of the surrounding buildings; and perhaps some people did come and go, or visit, as she did- but most- no, no, she would look down, and try to ascertain why she had been handed so many things at the door.

"Good morning," came a tremulous, familiar voice from the pew behind and she turned around in relief to see those same iron curls, that unfashionable coat, those warm, sad eyes.

"Alberta," said Millicent, and Alberta did not miss the inflection of surprise in her voice. "How lovely to see you this morning!"

Alberta smiled, wryly.

"I hadn't meant to come," she admitted.

And truly, she hadn't; she had mostly spoken to spite Harold, to provoke a response (_is there a god can there be a god is it real can it be real it is real is it real)- _she had not seriously contemplated going to church. Harold, however, seemed particularly gullible at times, or wilfully blind; in any case he had shamed her into keeping her word simply by taking her words at face value. If she had earned a pound for each time Harold asked her about her plans to travel to and from Holy Cross, she was sure she could easily subsidise a fortnight's earnings from the _Daily Mirror._

To her credit, Millicent's face showed minimal flickers or surprise at Alberta's admission, and she simply nodded calmly, matter-of-factly, and moved so that she was sitting next to Alberta.

"You have chosen a lovely seat," she said, nodding at the narrow, arched window to Alberta's left.

Under one ribboned label she read, _Seek and ye shall find, _and on the other, it read, _Behold I stand at the door. _A pale man in a white gown and sash, with an amusingly anachronistic lamp, stood at a door. The verses, Alberta assumed, were somewhere in the Bible; the seeking and finding had the whiff of memory that clung, obstinately, in the back of her mind.

"This is the service outline," Millicent continued, reaching out a well-worn glove to touch the first booklet in the green book. "We use it if we run out of copies of the BCP- Book of Common Prayer," she added, seeing Alberta's face. "Our last batch is dreadfully worn; this is a temporary pamphlet. This green book is your hymn book- see the numbers on this other pamphlet? - And this is this week's service, it will tell you the hymns, the collect of the day, announcements and such things."

Millicent spoke as if it was easy to juggle all the pieces of paper and all the books, as if it was part of her nature. Perhaps it was. Alberta ran her fingers along the spine of the hymn book; it felt large and unnaturally sized.

"Oh, here, we stand," Millicent said gently, touching Alberta's elbow with the lightest pressure, as the organ began booming some unfamiliar but strangely catchy melody. A strange odour caught Alberta's nostrils- spicy and musky, and she tried to catch her sneeze as the minister- preacher- walked past in a long, comparatively elaborately decorated blue set of robes.

She turned to ask Millicent something, but now the congregation was singing- hymn 95, according to her hymn book- and Millicent's face was upturned, almost rapturous. A ray of sunlight had caught from a window and was resting on her face, a lilting, amber glow, and it was perfect, perfect, and her question suddenly didn't seem to matter, and even if it had mattered, she could not remember it. Too soon, the song was over, the ray had disappeared, and the choir that had filed in was now singing some mournful _Kyrie_ (and didn't that just send memories of the past flooding through her mind), and she fidgeted in her pew, hoping nobody had noticed.

The rest of the service was a dreadfully strange affair. She found herself standing far more than she expected she would have to stand in a church service; the choir sang a rather long anthem, she felt out of place during Eucharist, neither desiring to go up, nor enjoying being the only person remaining seated (she tried to forget the shame of the moment when the minister tried to bring the bread and wine to her, and she had to shake her head at him from the corner of the pew)- and she was all too glad when it was finished.

"I imagine that this can be fairly overwhelming," Millicent said to her when they finally stood up, after the organist had finished his postlude (a concept Alberta had not been thrilled to be reminded of). "Would you want to talk over tea?"

But she had barely any time to respond, when a tired, pretty-ish woman in an unfashionable brown coat approached them.

"Millicent," the woman said, and Alberta stared at her, her blue eyes and her button nose. Something about her looked familiar, down to her pointed chin, but she could not place a name. "Millicent, I was wondering if I could speak with you; if you are free to visit on Tuesday-" she broke off, seeing Alberta.

Millicent was, strangely, beaming.

"Gladys Pole," she said, and, like a dead weight against her chest, Alberta realised. "Gladys, this is Alberta Scrubb. I'm sure you have met?"

Both Alberta and Gladys Pole averted their eyes. Alberta was sure her cheeks were not the only ones slightly pinker than usual.

"It is a pleasure to meet you," said Gladys to the tiled floor and Alberta nodded at the back door that led to the bells.

"Likewise."

"- Well!" said Millicent, and there was a question in her eyes. "I- I think- now that you have met, I shall help with the tea. I will see you soon, I hope!"

Alberta bristled at the betrayal; out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gladys Pole similarly start.

"Why, isn't Doris -"

"Good morning," Millicent smiled, and walked away.

Gladys and Alberta were left standing in the pew.

"I-" Gladys fumbled. "I am-"

"Shall we exit the building?" said Alberta, desperately.

"That sounds marvellous," said Gladys, and they walked, nearly a foot between them, to the door. Gladys opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it again.

Like a fish, Alberta thought, uncharitably, but did not speak.

"I-" Gladys began again. "Well- Jill- Eustace was such a lovely boy, such a wonderful young man." The last, more successful attempt of a sentence came in a tumbling rush, but its sincerity was fresher than the grass after spring rain. "It was such a joy to know him, and it's so, so lonely thinking- knowing- that he is not here anymore."

"I-" Alberta paused. She could not, in all honesty, say that she had liked Jill, and she most certainly could not say so to Jill's mother. "Eustace Clarence was very fond of your daughter."

Gladys Pole laughed, picked at the index finger of her left glove.

"Yes- very fond," she said, and fished out a handkerchief. "Very fond, if the letter he mailed to her was any indication."

"Letter?" said Alberta, standing a little more upright. "What letter?"

She studied Gladys Pole properly, perhaps for the first time; saw the shaded bags under her eyes, her ever so slightly blotchy, button nose, her admittedly delicate chin.

"Oh," said Gladys, "I didn't- I couldn't read it. No one is meant to know anyone's story but one's own- that's something Jill said," she laughed.

It is something my nephew Peter once said, Alberta wanted to say, but couldn't.

"Do you- do you have it?" she asked, unsure whether she was more fearful or hopeful of the response. "Do you-?"

But Gladys was shaking her head, and the handkerchief was making its way back to her coat pocket.

"I couldn't," she admitted, "I couldn't. I- I threw it away. But it was telling, wasn't it? That he sent a letter?"

Telling that he had finished it, Alberta wanted to say, and she did not know whether to laugh and thank the woman or throttle her for discarding what was possibly the last thing that _her son_ had written. (What right had Gladys Pole to throw Eustace Clarence's last letter away?)

"I- perhaps I should have contacted you," said Gladys, hesitantly.

"Yes, you should have," Alberta snapped, and Gladys wilted.

"I- but- would you have read it?" she said, pleadingly, then almost instantly; "No- I am sorry. This is becoming an excuse, not an apology. I should have- contacted you."

Not quite mollified, Alberta's lips twitched.

"My son," she began, and then she felt her face crumple (how embarrassing, how shameful, she was in public!). Oh, would this never end?

"Here," said Gladys' voice, and she felt something being pressed into her hands.

"No,- not used," Alberta managed to blubber out, feeling more and more ashamed of herself. "I have-"

"No, no, this one's clean, I have several," insisted Gladys' voice, the pressure on her hands a little more than before. "Here, Alberta-"

Blindly, she took the proffered handkerchief, pressed it to her eyes.

"I think I shall go home," she said, as distinctly as she could.

"I- I can come with you," Gladys offered, and Alberta shook her off.

"Tuesday, perhaps, not now-"

"Tuesday, when?"

"- Oh, anytime, anytime from 10, just not- not - not now."

And she quickly hurried down the stairs, hoping that Gladys Pole was not quite true to her word, away from the strange, dimly lit building with its oddly mellow organ, away from the soft voices of the quiet attendees, and the tiny pews that made one's decision to *not* take Eucharist all the more obvious, away from the tendrils that seemed, strangely, to tie her to the place, and back to the comfort, the security, of lunch, of Harold, of home.

* * *

><p><em>AN: So there's only one more chapter planned. It may be mammoth but there's only one- who knows, this baby may be finished before Christmas! _


	22. which is infinite which is yes

"Alberta?"

Harold was standing, shadowed, in the hall. The tiredness hung from him in a palpable haze, and she could see the lines now etched in his face, permanent as paper creases. With his right hand, he was squeezing the middle two fingers of his left.

"What has happened now?" she asked, shifting aside.

Slowly, Harold made his way to Eustace Clarence's bed, sat down, hands perpetually turning, clenching, turning.

"The headstone is ready," he said, and she could hear the hoarseness in his voice. "The headstone_s_ are all ready. I told them we will be- there- tomorrow. I have cancelled my classes."

When his still trembling hands reached for hers as though to comfort her, she knew; when he pressed a slight kiss to her cheek, she knew. She meant to nod, to take his hands, to comfort him, somehow; perhaps even to say something, but her entire being seemed oddly frozen, oddly heavy, and only the sound of her breathing prevented her from feeling like a frozen statue, caked in snow.

She did not know how long they sat there; it felt that years hid behind the cupboard, behind the doors, in the shadow of the desk, that years hurried and sauntered by between them, but her watch hands seemed to have barely moved before Harold was standing, telling her that he would help move Eustace Clarence's things when she had finished sorting through his things, and the room was empty once more.

In truth, she hadn't meant to come back to Eustace Clarence's room, not just yet; not so soon after the suffocating beams of Holy Cross- it was all so heavy, so thick, she felt difficulty even breathing.

"_So how was it? Church?" _Harold had asked, and he had looked so earnest as he speared the bean, had looked so confused when she laughed and said that she had felt something like that bean.

"_It's a different world, Harold," _she had said, by way of explanation, and he had looked half horrified when she spoke about the multiple booklets she had battled with during the service.

"_Surely that's not a very economical use of resources," _he had added, and she had made some quip about how churches and economics did not seem to fit particularly well in her eyes, and that had been that.

"_To be honest," _Harold confided that night, after she had turned out the lights, _"I'm more than slightly relieved that you didn't like it. I don't know what I'd have done if- if my sensible wife had started going to church." _

She'd laughed, even with the light streaming from the window onto Millicent's face fresh in her mind (_Behold I stand at the door), _had not mentioned anything of Gladys Pole (although that had been on the tip of her tongue at least several times over dinner)- had said something trivial about how she was always sensible, unlike _some _people who frequently forgot to bring an umbrella to work- and they had gone to sleep, content, her earlier resentment over Harold's patronising manner dissipating and swirling with the fog to the skies above.

In the morning, though- in the morning.

Alberta hated mornings.

She had never been much of a morning person, and it seemed to her that mornings existed chiefly to drain away the energy of the days and nights before it. She had never understood why Victor loved mornings, why Helen had been so frustratingly bubbly in the morning _("But surely, Alberta, mornings are- oh, what did L. M. Montgomery write? Fresh and new with no mistakes in them!")- _but that morning had been particularly dreary.

She had woken early, though the skies were already lightening in preparation for summer; Harold was still asleep, having somehow managed to steal most of the covers in the night, and he gave a half conscious grunt as she shifted across to face the wall. Shifting itself had been tiring, she saw in her mind herself, sitting up, standing up, walking to the window, preparing for the day. But the strange, anticipatory buzz thudded in her ears, fatalistic drum, and it felt for all the world that some strange net hovered near above her heart.

When Harold had woken up, had pressed a short kiss to her brow (she had closed her eyes and feigned sleep), she opened her eyes once more, saw the sun fully risen outside.

_I have missed the sunrise, _she had thought, and had been surprised by the slight pang in her heart. Romanticising nature had very much been Victor's thing, never hers. (Perhaps I am doing things because others cannot do them, a voice whispered, but she was too tired, too tired to hear it, and it faded. Since it faded, she concluded it had not been true).

She had skipped breakfast after dressing- not consciously, but instead of walking down the stairs to the breakfast table, her body had shifted, her feet were moving, and she found herself standing outside Eustace Clarence's room.

_Behold I stand at the door, _she thought, wryly. _(But I do not know what I am seeking.) _

No, no, that was a lie. The web of string and paper notes was still above her desk, the painting that she did not like but could not remove was still in her sitting room, the stories that had eked their way out of her reluctant niece had still been spoken, the home she had grown up in, that Victor had raised his children in, was still on the verge of being put on the market, and all of it, nearly all of it, focused upon those strangely inaccessible names in the centre.

Unexpectedly, a distant memory came to her; herself, as a child, and her grandmother, whom she could barely remember, reading to her; some story about a young girl, a princess, who had climbed a tower, found her grandmother or someone like that, followed a thread, and found - well, she had found something. Strange how that story came to her now, like something blown in by the wind; she had grown up by the time she had next visited her grandmother, and had politely informed her that she didn't fancy fairy stories, but would rather read the news. Now, a part of her wished, almost wildly wished, that she could recall the story, recall what that young princess had found. She wished that she could find.

And so it was that she found herself here, now, sitting on Eustace Clarence's bed (she would need to wash the sheets- fold the sheets- her heart contracted at the second thought), his papers and his small, bound journal beside her.

Most of his writings were copied out passages from the Bible- she found herself oddly taken aback by the number of psalms in which the writer was angry with God and complained. She toyed briefly with the question of what happened to the writers, especially when other people read their complaints, and felt warm shame pooling in her stomach when she realised how childish that attitude was (_struck down by lightning!). _

She looked at the small, brown book in her hands, traced the fraying corner in the right, opened the covers. Many of the pages were yellowed at the corners, showed signs of having been turned. So Eustace Clarence had not given up his childhood habit of keeping a journal.

_(He got that from me, _a small voice whispered, and she felt a small trickle of something warm and pleasant, almost like tears, somewhere near her heart.)

Several pages held diagrams she did not fully understand; she recognised a few circuits, and (using Eustace Clarence's own annotations) identified multiple diagrams of transistors. Several more pages held quotations from various people whose names were only as familiar to her as memories of her grandparents- George MacDonald, Oswald Chambers, G. K. Chesterton. The odd page held accounts of Eustace Clarence's daily life- _"School so tiring, science was cut short by a false fire alarm. Didn't even get onto discussing theory of relativity before we were shuffled out for English", _dated to 1948; another page holding an account of his attempts at making a vegetable casserole (_"Clearly inherited H's cooking ability. A. looked almost sick when she took a mouthful"_), another describing one of the new students at Experiment House (_"Poor chap looked almost green; Jill tried to show him around, but even then he looked like he was about to faint. Glad he's come now, and not - well, before."_). Butalthough she devoured them, she could not help but think _there is more there must be more. _

The next page held a sketch of a butterfly, and she could not hold back the choking sob that had, without her knowledge, been building in her throat. There were no labels here, but she could see the piles and the cardboard, the pins and the colours, and she reached out a hand, touched the sketch gently, as though it would actually take flight, as though the wing that Eustace Clarence had so carefully shaded and patterned was a light, fabric-like butterfly wing and would bend out of shape if touched too forcefully.

There was nothing on that page, only the butterfly, but she felt no immediate inclination to turn the page, tracing each curve, touching each dot, the thinning lines and the widening segments, all of which had scientific names that she did not know, that Eustace Clarence had once known, had once tried to share with her so eagerly.

But her hand went on turning passages _(there must be more there is more there must be)- _she saw a sketch of a man in very strange garb, with a very strange name, possibly someone in one of those fairy stories (for really, who named their child Tirian?), an entry filled with crosses and blotches and, among the network of ink, "Jill", and a longer, undated entry, which somehow caught her eye. Perhaps it was the lack of paragraphing, or - well, she wasn't sure what, precisely, it was, but her eyes slowed as they scanned the page, and she went back to the beginning, read the entry anew.

"_L. invited Jill and myself over for afternoon tea today. Jill was a little shocked when L. bounded across the room and half tackled her in a hug. Don't blame her; they've never met, and L. can be a bit much like that at times. Still remember when she and E. first came over, and L. tried to hug __me.__ Do not quite remember how I reacted, but I think she cried a little afterwards, so it can't have been very nice. Anyway. The tea. Was jolly good being there; needed the comfort, I think; Jill esp. was feeling down. I guess that's what happens when one comes back after Narnia. Everything became awkward when S. came down, after about an hour, in a spangly new dress. P. told her the neckline was a bit low, and you should have heard her rip into him! E. told him to lay off a bit, but did ask S. to change dress. All a bit embarrassing for Jill and me, it seemed all rather personal. S. flounced upstairs; P. says S. is being v. cagey; can't quite work out why she managed to forget Narnia, or is trying to forget, when he and E. and L. don't have the same difficulty. Jill said that maybe she could understand, that she'd cry awfully if she was told she couldn't be allowed back. Told Jill she was being an idiot, because crying awfully isn't the same as forgetting, or trying to forget. E. and L. seem to be having a competition as to who can defend S. the most; I don't know why, but I think E. seems to understand better. He always understood me the best, anyway Still remember when he told me, "You were an ass; I was a traitor." Can't help but think I was something of a traitor, too. If someone had offered me sweets I might've gone with them, too. That would make me just as guilty for- well, for Aslan's death. But then Aslan died to pay the penalty for E.'s betrayal- not __mine __per se. So that's not like Jesus- and by the way, it is- different, going to church. Very different. E. says I'll get used to it, in time, and L. says that in some ways it is not so different to Cair Paravel, but I wasn't ever a king, so don't know what she meant. But on Aslan's death- confusing. He died for E. And yet it was Aslan who healed both of us- still remember the skin being peeled off, being reminded, this is not you. _

_Still not sure how Aslan fits in __exactly__ with Jesus and God; E. tried to explain, but it was all a little confusing. Something about metaphors and parallel parables or something, didn't quite get it. Jill got it a little more, I think; she's more literary that way. P. just told me to see Aslan in Jesus, but got all muddled when trying to talk about how they're part of the same story but different stories? L. just told me to keep loving Aslan and to go to church and love Jesus, because they're the same. Not sure how a lion and God-as-man can be quite the same. L. replied, "Well, they're both God, aren't they? All things are possible with God." Still confused, but not confused enough to try to forget. I know Aslan is real, and I know, __know__, that Jesus is real. And I know that Jesus died and was raised and is __still alive__ (golly but it looks odd to write that), and because of that he's forgiven me for when I was an ass- when I was __mean__ and spiteful- and I can know Him. Will try to focus on that, and not the confusion. Maybe will try to talk to E. again, sometime, when he is being less confusing. _

_If E. can ever be less confusing._

_Doesn't matter. Will keep searching- maybe things will be as simple as UNDER ME. (Still can't believe Jill and PG and I funked that one up so much.) Will keep searching. _

_I still believe." _

Something in Alberta's head was ringing, but it was a different ringing, clear and light, as though someone had dipped their finger in water and was running it across the top of a glass.

She wasn't sure that things made _sense. _It would be far too much of a stretch to say that things made sense. Eustace Clarence himself had sounded rather confused- Jesus, Aslan, God, Narnia, church, they all twisted and churned together, and she fancied that if she took string to it, her wall would be even more confused than it was at the present moment. But this was a confirmation, if nothing else, a confirmation that there was _something _there, that the tangle of string wasn't just a meaningless knot, but something with a pulse, something that _meant _something.

Carefully, she gathered Eustace Clarence's papers together, slid them in as a fat, communal bookmark to his undated, extended journal entry, placed the book gently on his desk, against the wall, and walked into the hallway, down the stairs. She could hear Harold cleaning up in the kitchen, setting the kettle to boil for another cup of tea (she considered reminding him that he'd be late for class before remembering that Mondays were his days off, often spent researching or editing articles for _The Economic History Review_). But she did not stop there.

Seemingly of no one's accord, though Alberta knew that that was not the case, she found herself in the sitting room, staring at the painting.

There was something oddly, beautifully, life-like about that boat. _Bobbing on a wave, _she had once thought, but those words seemed a little shallow now. _Rising on a crest, _she thought. Not the most beautiful or subtle of waves, but then, the point about this painting wasn't the water, it was the boat. And it seemed to be almost, almost travelling towards her, moving through the canvas and across time (_I fell into the painting), _travelling somewhere she did not know, and ever beyond.

_Aslan, _she thought, _Narnia. _

They weren't her words; she realised with a rush of piercing grief that left her rubbed raw that they would, likely, never be her words. Between Eustace Clarence's unfinished, barely-paragraphed journal entries that he could no longer explain, memories of conversations she refused to let him finish, and Susan's stuttered stories, it seemed a story that would now be forgotten, or never remembered in full. It seemed, now that she recalled something Cynthia had said when covering British and Palestinian relationships in the 30s, that sometimes that the world was like that; fragments of different threads of different stories that never joined, but were eased together to form a great canvas upon which Life threw globs of paint here, there, and left one striding purposefully along one thread, stumbling at another.

But then, even if she did know the story, would she have been able to make total sense of it?

_Doesn't matter. Will keep searching. ... I still believe. _

And she saw the window, above that awfully low rafters, and its picture of the man, Jesus, she assumed, holding the anachronistic lamp: _Seek and ye shall find. _

But to find, that implied one had to first seek, and to seek, one had to believe that there was _something, _and one should have some sort of idea about what that _something _was.

Eustace Clarence did, she thought, and with a rush, she saw, she understand, she _knew. _

It couldn't have been just a story. It had never been 'just' a story.

_Where shall I begin? _she thought, piteously, and saw the string in her room upstairs, all the words, remembered juggling the booklets and the hymn book and the low, dark rafters. Catechisms- would she have to learn them? And there was so much to know, so much she had cut away from her life, had ignored, because she had not needed to know- or had thought she had not needed to know. She saw Eustace Clarence's copies of passages from the Bible, remembered him returning from the Pevensies with enormous volumes to do with Christianity that he had borrowed from Edmund. _Where shall I start? _

And a flutter rose somewhere in her heart, gripped her throat, shook at her hands.

_You know nothing, _a voice sneered, and the flutter intensified so that her feet seemed rooted to the carpet, to the ground below, down, down past the cellar, into the darkness beneath the foundations of the house.

_I know nothing, _she thought desperately, _I know nothing and I don't know what I can do- I don't know if there is anything I can do! _

And even as the thoughts came, she knew with a sinking dread that it was not something she could do, it was not something she could control, could instantly know.

_Is there something there is something _now seemed a foolish chant of the past; clearly, there was _something, _and somehow she sensed that Eustace Clarence had known, that the answer _was, _absurdly, in a place she disdained, a place she still did not feel comfortable in, even if there were Millicent MacPhersons to guide on through a pewsheet and a weekly sheet and the hymn book- but she sensed, somehow, the answer was there, and it lay in what Eustace Clarence had written about Aslan, about Jesus.

_(It is not about me.) _

And because it wasn't to do with her, she felt so lost. Before, she was the one pulling the string, analysing the painting, writing the articles; she could _do _things because it had to do with her. Alberta Scrubb wrote articles, Alberta Scrubb could have majored in art history, Alberta Scrubb lived in a smart house with a smart husband and a talented son. But this, _this- _

The flutter grew, beating at her head, and she would have covered her face with her hands if she thought it could make things any better.

_I can't do it! _she wanted to scream, but the beating was so loud in her head that even the dragon boat with its purple sails seemed to blur, to rush over the crest of the waves, madly fall, rise, crash, fall. _I can't do it! _

- And suddenly, it was still, and that pure, distant ringing had replaced the flutter and beating, and she felt an incredible _lightness- _and warmth. And it felt so easy, so easy. All she had to do was step out.

_Let go, step out. _

And she had a strange image, clear as day. She saw herself, but she looked ill, unkempt, and was hunched in the shadows.

_Straighten up, put your shoulders back! _she wanted to say, but then she saw that the hunch was because she was clutching something, clutching something so tightly that her veins were white, and it was so heavy that her frame was bowing in. And, peering more closely yet, she knew it was a book, a book in which she had stored a complaint that she did not even know she had had, a complaint she had nurtured in her heart against God, but it was addressed to Jill, to Peter, to Edmund, to Lucy, because it was so much easier to hate people than a god she did not (consciously) believe in- _and I hate you for stealing the love of my son and the closeness of my brother, it would have been better that you had taken him in illness, but you have stolen my son, stolen his heart and his character and I hate you for stealing- _on, and on. And still, she clutched it, and her shoulders bent further and further in, and she could not breathe for the heaviness.

But beyond, she could see light; light so blinding she could not make out the forms or anything within, but _light, _and she knew, if she would only let go, she could go forth, could discover, search, seek.

And she tried to let go, but her grip was too tight, her fingers so curled they had merged into the book, and her fingers were somehow digging _into _the page, and the light grew further and further until she could not bear it.

_I can't do it, _she thought, _someone must cut my hands from this book if I am to move!_

And then she felt it; felt someone reach out and made a cut, and it was so deep it felt as though it had gone clear through her heart. She shuddered and fancied she saw a gleam, and, with a little gush of blood, her hands were free, the book tumbled to the bottomless darkness, and she stepped forth.

Even as she blinked, the image faded into the consistently blue waters in the painting ahead, but light came through the window, and it caught upon the red lamp on the table, filling the place with colour.

_And I can keep on searching, _she thought, and thought of the window with its banner _Seek and ye shall find, _of Eustace Clarence's confused jumble of thoughts, of the many confusing, sometimes cryptic conversations he had tried to hold (but reasoned, they must have been reasoned, she knew how much he read), and the lightness touched, gently, at her heart, spread outwards, and whispered _peace, peace, _as it passed.

Her hand hovered by the painting once more, and she felt a smile smooth the weariness from her cheeks and ease the tiredness in her heart, and she left the room bathed in the morning light as she went to prepare her breakfast.

* * *

><p><em>AN: __AND IT IS FINISHED! Not a complete conversion, but a definite start. Thank you all who have followed me faithfully to the end- I appreciate all your reviews and your encouragement!_

_Just a few notes before I sign off: the image of the book with the complaint is stolen from Lewis' impeccable __Till We Have Faces__. If you haven't read it, you should, because it is one of the most perfect things ever written. The idea that Alberta cannot release the book and needs her hands to be cut from the book is borrowed, albeit in a modified form, from George MacDonald's __Lilith__, also an excellent read (even if I don't agree 100% with his theology). _

_Merry Christmas!_


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